Laura Hoffman's music has been performed in Canada, the United States and Australia. In Canada, she has received commissions from Upstream for a work incorporating improvisation; from Dalhousie University for a choral work on a text by Halifax poet George Elliott Clarke; and from CBC radio and the Aeolian Singers for an extended work for woman's chorus, piano and oboe. In 1989 her work for violin and piano won the Memphis Composers' Alliance, Inc. violin composition contest. Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1987) won the Mu Phi Epsilon Music Fraternity international composition contest in its division in 1989, and It will never, ever... for solo cello won in 1991.
Dr. Hoffman was born in Lynchburg, Virginia. She received the Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees from Radford University in Virginia, and the DMA in Composition from the University of Memphis, where she studied with Don Freund. Her other teachers include Arthur Jannery, Harold Schiffman, John Corina, and Roy Johnson.
With influences ranging from a love of Bartok’s music to a childhood spent listening to Spike Jones, her music is eclectic and wide ranging.