Jan Gunnar Hoff

Jan Gunnar Hoff was born in Bodø in 1958 and began classical piano lessons at age ten. He studied in the jazz programme at Trondheim Conservatory of Music and later was a student of composition at the Norwegian Academy of Music. Since 1979 he has been a freelance musician, performing with international musical celebrities such as Alex Acuña, Mike Stern, Pat Metheny, Maria João and Marilyn Mazur. In 2014 he received the prestigious Buddy Prize, the highest distinction in Norwegian jazz, and the same year he was appointed an official Steinway & Sons Artist. He has performed in Los Angeles, New York, London, Zagreb, Milan, Stockholm, Moscow, Havana, Lima and Istanbul and has toured in Scandinavia, Japan and Eastern Europe. Hoff has released a number of critically acclaimed solo albums and has written over 250 works, among them, a commissioned work for the Vossa Jazz Festival and the choral composition Meditatus (2004), which received the Edvard Prize awarded by the Norwegian copyright organization TONO. He was arranger and artistic director for the Grammy-nominated album Quiet Winter Night (2L/Universal 2012). Among recent releases are Barxeta (Losen Records) with Acuña/Hoff/Mathisen, two solo piano albums on the 2L label, as well as Fly North (Losen), which was nominated in 2014 for Spellemannprisen, Norway’s Grammy. Jan Gunnar Hoff is professor at the Arctic University of Norway (UiT) and the University of Agder.