Hannah Alkire
Hannah was born in Berkeley, CA but grew up in Champaign, Illinois. She started playing the piano at the age of four, then begged to play the cello at age eight. There wasn’t really a beginning to her love for the cello. The cello’s voice was always a sound she was drawn to.
She grew up in a musical household. Her father played the piano. Her mother was a music instructor, and her sister played the violin. Hannah has many warm memories of musical sessions of piano trios by the fireside, and her bedtime routine was accompanied by Chopin and Liszt and Brahms piano works. Musical genes trace back to her grandparents, Eddie and Margie Alkire, who opened a music business in 1929 and thrived. Margie taught guitar until she was 90! Love of music was simply the way of life.
Hannah studied with Gabriel Magyar of the Hungarian String Quartet, and was classically trained. She took the cello seriously from the start, and played in her school orchestra with her sister Sabina, bluegrass great Alison Krauss and Alison’s brother, Viktor Krauss. She decided early on to keep the cello her passion but not go to music school, although she continued to study and play seriously. At the University of Illinois, she got a degree to teach French, English and Spanish at the high school level, and then taught for 5 years. In 1992, she moved to the Boulder, CO area.
After her arrival in Colorado, Hannah enjoyed performing in the Boulder Bach Festival, Colorado MahlerFest, and in area symphony orchestras. Eager to stretch herself, Hannah moved out of the strictly classical world. She started playing with rock, funk, and alternative groups, performing at various local venues and national events like the South by Southwest festival in Texas. She was also a founding member of the Anasazi String Quartet, whose repertoire included everything from Dvorak to Zepplin, baroque to The Grateful Dead.
Hannah stays active recording, and has been involved in numerous projects to come out of the Rocky Mountain region. It was through her studio work that she met Joe. On that snowy day in February 1998, Hannah had no idea a year later playing her cello with Joe would become her lifeline…literally.
In January 1999, Hannah was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. She underwent chemotherapy and radiation through August of 1999. During that time, she continued to rehearse with Joe almost daily. Acoustic Eidolon was a source of hope and an anchor during this challenging time. During the last several days of each round of chemo, when Hannah felt the strongest, they would go into the studio and record cello parts. As a result, the debut album, Eidolon, was finished in late April 1999, and their first tour was actually during a brief break from radiation. Each year, Hannah celebrates her cancer-free anniversary, and describes herself as “strangely grateful” for her experience. “A wake-up call of that caliber leaves you pretty much stuck in permanent appreciation mode” says Hannah. She believes life is a celebration of all that we DO have, and a culmination of all we love and are called to do. She and Joe are committed to bringing joy to as many people as possible through their music, and often add in appearances in schools, hospitals, hospices, and even chemo infusion rooms to inspire and help others.
2012 Acoustic Eidolon. All rights reserved.
