New Music USA Online Library

David Hahn
Biography

David Hahn creates diverse styles of music ranging from the experimental sounds of processed electric guitars to musique concrète sound collages to more traditional settings featuring instruments and voices. Educated at Brown University, the New England Conservatory of Music, and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, Mr. Hahn received the doctorate in historical
musicology at Stanford University in 1993. He began his career in music as a performer on lute, guitar, and mandolin. His performances include those with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony and Opera Orchestras, Boston Musica Viva, the Seattle Symphony, Musica Nel Chiostro in Florence, and the City of London Festival. He served on the faculty at the New England Conservatory where he co-founded the Boston Renaissance Ensemble which toured widely in the US and Europe.

David Hahn has composed over ninety diverse pieces of music, many of which have been commissioned and performed by established professional ensembles and soloists, including the Concerto Alla Barocco written for the Minneapolis Guitar Quartet who performed the work with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Four Short Pieces performed by Cem Duruöz in Carnegie Hall, Concerto Anatolia premiered by the Antalya State Orchestra, Turkey, De Omnibus Apostolis performed by the University of Washington Singers, W Is For Weasel premiered by the Shank-Hagedorn Duo, and Kindergarten Word Ring for octaphonic speaker system, performed at the Spectrum Press Electronic Music Odyssey Concert Series. He has also collaborated with artists in film, theater, spoken word, and other media, such as in the piece Zagreb Everywhere, an experimental video, which was selected to be shown at the Rencontres Internationales Festival in Paris and Berlin.

Mr. Hahn’s music has been performed throughout the United States, and internationally in Canada, Chile, Turkey, Croatia, Cuba, France, Germany, Cyprus and Bolivia. It has been released on Capstone & Centaur Records, is available at CDBaby.com, and is regularly broadcast on independent radio programs.

Awards and Fellowships: ArtLink Collaborative Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Soros Foundation, 1st Prize: Classical Mandolin Society of America Composition Contest, Composer Assistance Grant from the American Music Center, Meet The Composer Grant, Puffin Foundation Grant, GAP Grant from Artists Trust, Graduate Fellowship from the Stanford Humanities Center, Graduate Fellowship from the Stanford University Music Department, Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society.

www.davidhahnonline.com • david.hahn@stanfordalumni.org