I grew up in Bloomington/Normal Illinois. These two cities are often called the “Twin Cities” by many locals. Normal Illinois is host to Illinois State University and Heartland Community College. Bloomington is host to Illinois Wesleyan University.

I am the middle child of 5 boys and am fortunate to have grown up in a diverse community . I have two great parents and I’ll have to say they were very successful in raising 5 boys. All my brothers are married, successful in their careers and they all have 2.5 children.

In terms of music, my Father was somewhat of an inspiration when I was a child as he played piano (self-taught) as a hobby. If you can name a song, and he is familiar with it, he can play it very well for the first time. My Mom would usually join in with her beautiful voice too! As a hyperactive child, I would pound tables, car hoods, anything that could remotely act as a drum beat. So my parents bought me drums, and I took lessons. While in 4thgrade a music teacher named Carl Huffman came into our class and showed students the violin, viola, and cello. I liked the cello, and persuaded my parents to let me rent one and learn in a weekly class that Mr. Huffman taught. By 7thgrade I had progressed enough to get a full sized cello, and my parents took me to Chicago one weekend to pick one out. I picked out the most expensive one and they had to buy it through a loan.

I continue to play the cello to this day and have studied at Eastern Illinois University with Dr. Tracy, Greg Hamilton at Illinois State University, and many years as a child with Ruth Krieger a cello professor at Wesleyan .

I do play other instruments such as guitar, keyboards, bass and whatever else I can tackle, and I’ve been fortunate to play and record music with very accomplished musicians along the way. In these last 4 years especially, I’ve been able to buy recording equipment and other necessary accessories to record and mix some of my own creations. Although I’ve been writing songs for over 30 years, the cost of high tech recording equipment always kept me from biting the bullet, and the old 4-track Fostex cassette machine just wasn’t cutting it anymore. I’m so glad that technology in computers and recording equipment has come to being so that it is much more affordable to the many serious and amateur musicians out there.

Well, thanks for visiting this site. I hope you come back again to listen and download the new songs that are still yet to come. Sincerely,

Kurt E Hoffman