WILLIAM REES HOFMANN

WILLIAM REES HOFMANN

William Rees Hofmann is a multi-instrumentalist specialising in both the Indian Sarod and the Afghan Rubab. Representing the musical lineages of the Maihar Gharana as well as that of Ustad Nabi Gol of Kabul, he has been studying sarod for the past twelve years under the tutelage of Satyam Rai in Gujarat, India, and has been a student of the eminent rubab player and ethnomusicologist John Baily since 2013. Classically trained in viola, Hofmann earned a BA in Hindustani Vocal Music from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in Gujarat, and also holds an MMus degree from SOAS in Sarod and Rubab Performance. William has performed internationally both solo and with Jāmi Ensemble, including at the Jaipur Literature Festival, Patiala Punjab, Muzaffar Ali’s Jahān-e-Khusrau, Café OTO, Sage Gateshead, and the Edinburgh Fringe, among others, as well as run workshops on the classical music of Kabul. He has toured and performed extensively in the UK alongside artists such as Jonathan Mayer, Amina Khayyam, Sarathy Korwar, and Najma Akhtar, and released a cassette of solo viola compositions on Night Ritual Recordings in 2013, entitled A Burial Shroud. His most recent release was a split cassette under the Curling Hands moniker for Skell Records. He has also recently been granted a (now indefinitely postponed) Senior Performing Arts Fellowship (2020) from the American Institute of Indian Studies to turn his doctoral research on early Sufi song text collections into a performance and lecture/demonstration along with Jāmi Ensemble.