Why violinist Hilary Hahn loves the Houston Symphony
She has also played with Austin rockers And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead
Chris Gray November 11, 2020Updated: November 11, 2020, 8:18 am
Photo: Dana van Leeuwen
In her rise to the upper echelon of the world's solo violinists, Hilary Hahn has collaborated with world-famous conductors and cutting-edge composers. And one sweaty Texas rock band.
Roughly 20 years ago, Hahn found herself "fangirling" when two members of …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead — the Austin art-rockers known for their pummeling guitar assault and take-no-prisoners attitude toward their equipment — approached her backstage after a performance. (It was in either Dallas or Houston, she figures.) Conrad Keeley, the band's co-founder and primary frontman, asked her to help flesh out a melody he had written in a college classical-music appreciation class.
The result, "To Russia, My Homeland," appeared on Trail of Dead's 2004 album "Worlds Apart." Hahn also played on two songs on their next release,"So Divided." She joined them onstage a few times during this period, including a memorable Moscow gig where she borrowed an electric violin to match the band's onstage din.
"I never did that many shows with them, but it was really spectacular, the energy onstage with them," says Hahn. "I really loved it. Because, you know, the double drum kit wailing away, and everything's plugged in.
"There was just so much sound," she adds. "It was really great."
Houston Symphony: Hilary Hahn Returns
When: 8 p.m. Nov. 13-14; 2:30 p.m. Nov. 15
Details: $34-$68; $20 (livestream only); 713-224-7575; houstonsymphony.org
Hahn, 40, returns to Houston this weekend, coming off an appearance at the Dallas Symphony's Women in Classical Music symposium in which she performed, gave a keynote speech and won the symposium's Award of Excellence. It marked her first time onstage after taking a yearlong sabbatical, which was interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.
As she learned to adapt to such realities of lockdown life as her kids jumping on the bed behind her during a Zoom call, Hahn says she began exploring "ways to be a musician from afar." Her new approach is already bearing fruit: Besides returning to the concert stage, Hahn will be serving a virtual residency this fall for the Philharmonic Society of Orange County in California.
"I think all of this is stuff that can be continued in the future," she says. "It's interesting to think, going forward, what methods are developing during this time to connect and keep music vibrant, even when you're not in the same place as the audience."
Hahn has such an affinity for the Houston Symphony, "I feel like all together we're a unit," she says. She was the featured soloist on the orchestra's eight-city 2018 European tour and participated in an orchestral exchange between Houston and Medellin organized by music director Andrés Orozco-Estrada. Those and many other collaborations have kindled a special rapport between the two.
"I can't speak for him, but I feel like the way we do certain pieces together, you wouldn't find me playing the piece that same way with someone else," Hahn says. "It's just specific to that particular combination of artists, and I have that with the conductors I work with frequently, and who really get what I'm trying to do.
"I feel very free to try different versions of my ideas, so I really value when there's a collaboration that is unique, even within my own musical world," she adds. "So yeah, I'm sad he can't make it. I was like, 'Noooooo!'"
Since Orozco-Estrada will be unable to travel to Houston due to European COVID restrictions, another participant in the Women in Classical Music symposium will step in. Longtime director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (from which she is retiring after this season), Marin Alsop is perhaps the world's best-known and most acclaimed female conductor and an old friend of Hahn's. According to the violinist, whenever the two have shared a stage — in Baltimore, Sao Paolo and Chicago, among other places — "it just cooks."
"I'm also grateful that she's doing these concerts with the socially distanced setup, because that's also an interesting challenge as far as everyone hearing each other differently when they're playing together," says Hahn, who was raised in Baltimore.
"Me having that connection with the conductor and also me having that experience with Houston, I think it'll help us quickly adapt to the spacing and the different way of hearing each other," she adds. "I'm just really glad that Marin could step in."
Hahn has been playing the piece she'll be performing in Houston, Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major, since she was about 12 years old. Her hands weren't big enough to fully master the piece's demanding fingering, she recalls. But that was then. Today, Hahn has mapped out the piece so thoroughly she has several options for how to play any given measure.
"Along the way, I've done that whole process many, many times, so now I feel like I have a lot of confidence in my interpretation of it, and it's clear to me where I'm going with it," she says. "It doesn't feel awkward anymore."
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