Keynote Speaker - Miles Hoffman
2009 ASTA National Conference
March 19-21, 2009
Atlanta, Georgia

Getting Better: A wide-ranging look at the idea of Progress -- progress for our students, ourselves, and for the musical life of our country.

Miles Hoffman lives in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where he is Dean of the Petrie School of Music at Converse College and Associate Professor of Viola. The legendary cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich called him “one of the outstanding violists I have had the privilege to hear and one destined for a brilliant career,” and indeed over the past twenty years Mr. Hoffman has appeared frequently as viola soloist with orchestras throughout the United States, garnering glowing reviews for performances of concerto repertoire ranging from the baroque to the contemporary. Among the many orchestras with which he has performed as soloist are the Arkansas Symphony, Illinois Symphony, National Philhamonic, Lincoln (NE) Symphony, Greenville (SC) Symphony, South Carolina Philharmonic, West Virginia Symphony, Missoula Symphony, El Paso Symphony, Santa Fe Symphony, Abilene Philharmonic, and Winston-Salem Symphony. As Music Commentator for National Public Radio’s flagship news program, Morning Edition, he is regularly heard by a national audience of nearly fourteen million people, and he has been a featured lecturer for orchestras, universities, chamber music series, festivals, and other organizations.  His musical commentary, “Coming to Terms,” was heard weekly throughout the country for thirteen years – from 1989 to 2002 – on NPR’s Performance Today, and his book, The NPR Classical Music Companion: An Essential Guide forEnlightened Listening, is now in its ninth printing from the Houghton Mifflin Company. Mr. Hoffman is also founder and violist of the American Chamber Players, with whom he regularly tours the United States and Canada. With the ACP he has recorded works of Mozart, Bruch, Bloch, Stravinsky, and Rochberg for a series of compact discs produced by the Library of Congress and distributed internationally on the Koch International Classics Label.  The American Chamber Players are Artists-in-Residence at the Society of the Four Arts, in Palm Beach, Florida, and the resident ensemble of the June Chamber Festival at the Kreeger Museum, in Washington, DC.  In May of 2003 Mr. Hoffman was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Centenary College of Louisiana in recognition of his achievements as a performer and educator. 

A graduate of Yale University and the Juilliard School, Mr. Hoffman has won prizes in the National Arts Club and Washington International Competitions.  He made his New York solo recital debut in 1979 at the 92nd Street Y (the New York Times called the recital “an uplifting experience”), and has since appeared in recital in many cities. He played the first American performance of Krzysztof Penderecki’s “Cadenza” for solo viola and the first Washington area performance of the Penderecki Viola Concerto, and he has had works written for him by composers Bruce Saylor, Max Raimi, Roger Ames, and Seymour Barab, among others. In 1982 he founded the Library of Congress Summer Chamber Festival, which he directed for nine years, and which led to the formation of the American Chamber Players. He has performed and taught at many distinguished summer music festivals here and abroad, appearing regularly in recent years at both the Brevard Music Center and the Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival (NC). He is also a frequent guest artist and lecturer at the annual Winter Park (FL) Bach Festival. A recent event of particular note: in March of 2007 Mr. Hoffman appeared as soloist with the United States Marine Band in a rare performance of the Morton Gould Concertette for viola and band.  

Both when traveling as a soloist and on his tours with the American Chamber Players, he presents children’s programs, classes, and master classes in schools and universities around the United States.