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Musician Profile - Monte Hoffman
What is your hometown?
Ventnor City, New Jersey
How long have you been with the BPO?
44 Years
What is your favorite part of being a member of the BPO?
Playing the music!
What is your favorite piece of music?
Schubert's Sonata Arpeggione as played by cellist Leonard Rose
What other orchestras have you performed with?
Casals Festival Orchestra in Puerto Rico, Eastman Philharmonic-chosen as International Ambassadors for the US State Department
What types of music do you like to listen to?
Classical
Do you play any other instruments?
No
What do you like to do in your free time?
I am a gamester, sports fanatic, TV lover and avid tennis player.I collect antiques and miscellaneous objets d'art, and own and rent real estate
What is your favorite movie?
Amadeus
What is your favorite TV show?
CBS Sunday Morning
What is your favorite restaurant?
Rue Franklin
What do you like best about Buffalo?
Its people!
Biography
Cellist Monte Hoffman joined the BPO in 1964, having graduated the Eastman School of Music. The Curtis String Quartet inspired his initial love for the cello, nurtured by subsequent study with many late greats including Orlando Cole, Leo Sachs, Leonard Rose, Ronald Leonard, Michael Grebanier, and Mischa Schneider. He attended Meadowmount 's noted summer string camp 1965-60, studying chamber music with Joseph Gingold, Oscar Schumsky and William Kroll.
A native of the Atlantic City, NJ area, Monte's early employment opportunities included playing in pit orchestras for Miss America pageants and for 500 Club headliners such as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. With a string quartet, he played the Traymore Hotel on the Boardwalk regularly, also performing nightly on the Ocean City Pier with a youth orchestra. His Eastman years fortuitously coincided with its Philharmonia's 1960-61 fourteen week world tour sponsored by the U.S. State Department—Monte and colleagues traveled throughout Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Switzerland, Lebanon, Cypress, Poland, Sweden, Egypt, Turkey Belgium, Russia, and the Netherlands playing over fifty concerts.
Well-known for his eclectic style and passion for Buffalo, its people, and the BPO, Monte shares a historic Victorian home in Buffalo with wife Cheryl Gobbetti Hoffman, the noted flutist and teaching artist, and an exotic feline masquerading as Lulu Belle. Additional family members are daughters Alicia and Mara, son Jonathan, grandchildren Hayden, Max, and Piper, and children-in-law Chandra, Bruce, and Javier.
During his BPO tenure, Monte has served the BPO as a Board Director and member of the Finance and Endowment Committees as well as the musicians' negotiating team.
He is an avid collector of arts, antiques, and real estate, an active member of the Buffalo Tennis and Squash Club, and claims to have been the very first customer at the very popular local eatery—Ambrosia. | 
