Flutist Holly Hofmann and pianist Bill Cunliffe have performed worldwide together. Their formation as a duo was a happy accident; while playing as a quartet at the Telluride Jazz Festival ten years ago, they decided to play a duo tune. Cunliffe recalled, “It was really amazing...Holly and I just seemed to read each others’ minds. I would play a substitute chord change, or change the rhythm, and she was there, right where I was.” After feeling the musical connection and the enthusiastic audience response, they both decided to make the duo a permanent part of their musical lives.

Initially a psychology major at Duke University, Cunliffe fell under the spell of the great Mary Lou Williams during his senior year, subsequently enrolled in the jazz program at the Eastman School of Music. After touring with Buddy Rich and Frank Sinatra, he performed with Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Phil Woods, Art Blakey and James Moody. He is a Thelonious Monk Competition winner and has a number of solo CDs to his credit, including several with his critically praised sextet.

Hofmann is recognized as one of the top flutists in jazz. Although she started playing jazz with her father at five, she began formal classical training with the great Maurice Sharp a few years later and continued to receive degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music and University of Northern Colorado. She has numerous CDs as a leader and has performed with Ray Brown, Kenny Barron, Cedar Walton, Houston Person, and Mike Wofford, among many others.

The duo’s two releases on Azica Records were widely acclaimed in most of the major jazz publications, and they have performed in the US, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. They have done a variety of other projects together, including a session featuring Cunliffe on the B3 organ, in a quintet with the great trumpeter Bobby Shew, and a live recording at Birdland with the great Ray Brown on bass, and stalwart New York drummer Victor Lewis.

Hofmann and Cunliffe are celebrating a brand new duo release this fall, "Three's Company" on the Capri Records label. The recording features special guests Regina Carter, Alvester Garnett, Ken Peplowski and Terell Stafford.

Jazz Times says, “the two are classically trained, with chops a-go-go; both have long jazz resumes, they’re perfectly at ease in both idioms; their playing is so tight they seem to share a single musical brain.”

Please visit Holly's Website for more information and sample clips

Holly Hofmann Website