Hilary Hahn

My teacher was still practicing Bach until his death at 89. I have no doubt that if I live that long, I'll be doing the same thing.

When I started my recording career, I hoped that someday the Grammy committee would notice something.

In the performance sense, I find that interpretation is improvisatory in nature. You can go anywhere with an interpretation on any given day.

I'm more creative the more rules I have - note values, tempos, dynamic markings. Somehow, I find that really inspiring.

Whenever I work with people who are nonclassical artists, I kind of get a kick in the pants. I think, 'How can I apply what I do to their music?'

Taking on music that's not played very much is a contribution I can give. There's so much I feel that needs more attention.

I've always heard the same doomsday concerns and yet, every day, there are people going to a classical concert for the first time - whether it's on a date or being dragged there by their grandmother.

As more people get into indie bands and alternative music, they're also getting more into other genres that fit those categories, like jazz and classical. It's becoming more rebellious to go to a classical concert. You're getting the younger art house crowd and regular students as well as those who are just curious.

Growing up as a classical musician, you're taught a lot about outreach and about how people aren't being taught music in school. But you don't have to study music to like it. And a lot of the music that people like - be it jazz or rock or opera - is stuff they haven't studied.

I like when things happen very quickly, just flash in and flash out. It keeps things interesting.

For vacation, I like going to places I've never been before. I've gone to some remote places, like the Arctic Circle.

I've been to New Zealand several times.

I go a lot to Korea and Japan.

With a Grammy, if you're releasing your record with a major label, you have a chance with any record. You also have a very long shot with every record.

I enjoy reading and thinking, and it's hard to make that space as an artist.

I like to take walks and getting out and seeing things. These experiences are so irreplaceable and give you a whole different perspective on the greater context that you're in. If I didn't try to take advantage of that, I'd be missing out on a lot of really interesting things.

I grew up not watching TV and I enjoy TV but it kind of takes my brain away from me.

I try to prioritize a certain amount of quiet work every day.

Of course everyone has those moments of frustration now and then, when you say, 'I wish I could play well already - or just stop.' But it's too much trouble to stop just for a moment of frustration. It is when you keep going that you make the most progress.

Most kids are very seriously interested in something - friends, math, shopping, sports. For me it happened to be music and the violin. I had the chance to pursue it without having it get in the way of my life.

That word 'prodigy' has such a derogatory implication. It is used to describe people who are forced to play a lot of concerts very early, people whose audience comes because of their youth, people who are exploited. None of the above really applied to me.

Music can inspire immediate emotional reactions, even if the only person who hears it is the person creating it.

You don't need to be a performer in order to dive into the sensory experience of music. Simply get as close as you can to the source of the music.

I love performing. The sounds coming at me are dynamic, colorful and multi-layered. The energy from the musicians around me and from the audience is a swirl of excitement. Sometimes, I can feel the stage vibrating under my feet.

When we talk about music, we tend to place our experiences into one of two categories: making the music and listening to it. Delineating the two seems practical and obvious. In reality, though, there are a lot of opportunities for overlap, and it doesn't matter how you get into the music as long as you connect with it.

I try to do a lot of direct contact with the audience, because the audience is part of the concert, too, as much as anyone on stage, and it's a shame not to get to meet them if you get the chance.

What I do is creative. It doesn't seem like that when I'm playing a piece that was written in the past, but the score is just the outline and everything in it is relative. The key is to make this piece written by someone else belong to you and then connect to the audience.

I always feel I have a long way to go in my playing and my music.

It's fine with me if people want to applaud between movements of a concerto. It doesn't bother me - it's part of performance experience.

You couldn't be performing if it weren't for the audience. I appreciate them being there. So why not applaud them? They took time out of their schedule to show up and sit in the concert hall and be part of the experience.

Sometimes, I'm not sure why I wind up doing some of the things I do.

I don't think there's such a difference between older and newer music as there is between one composer and another.

The audience will find the artist who matches their interests. If you're not being true to yourself, your audience can't find you, because there's a wall up between who you are and who they're seeing.

If you start censoring what you're interested in for the audience, you don't give the audience enough credit.

I am not trying to be cooler or change my image or get into pop music.

Musicians are also interpretive artists and we are just as creative as painters and writers. We interpret in a way that expresses ourselves.

I have always enjoyed literature classes, and I took a fiction workshop for writing and analyzing at Curtis... I don't know if would do it professionally, but it's nice to have the balance with the music.

One of the most rewarding things is meeting someone after a concert who has never been to a concert before. It is incredibly rewarding when they say, 'This is my first classical concert.' It is really exciting for everyone.

I guess I just like the idea of digging things up. Although I used to be scared of human skeletons.

As a professional, you pick up ideas from your colleagues and the orchestras you work with, while coming up with mutual interpretations in very short periods of time.

I have a lot of interests. I daydreamed about various career options growing up; the one I'm in is the first one that worked out, and I love it, so I feel very lucky.

My career direction has probably been guided as much by curiosity and my personality as by my early influences.

The nice thing about the violin repertoire is that it's small enough that you can plan on learning everything at some point - whereas the piano repertoire is so enormous it wouldn't be possible unless you're a learning machine.

It's no good to do a piece once and then move on because it doesn't have time to develop. I try to play seven or eight concerti in a season, and generally one or two of those are new for me.

Bach in general was so good with the violin. He just finds the genius way around his music on the instrument.

Edgar Meyer's violin concerto was the first piece of contemporary music I worked on in any depth. I was 18 or 19.

When you have a teacher who is part of a tradition, the other people in that tradition are such stars. You just look at them like pop stars.

I grew up in Baltimore.

Deutsche Grammophon really has a grasp of the classical repertoire.

One challenge, if you do a website, a Youtube channel, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Ping, other things like that, is you don't have time to be an artist. As a performer, you need to practice.