Born and raised in Maryland, he began playing piano and ukelele at age five, adding guitar and banjo a few years later. By his teenage years he had a country-rock band, then worked his way through college as a church organist and by playing in the bars around Baltimore. After college, Hoffner moved to Nashville and spent the entire 1980's decade on the road. For most of those years he was pianist and songwriting partner for pop/country star Michael Martin Murphey, playing and writing songs on thirteen Murphey albums. As a featured instrumentalist, he's performed with many of the nation's symphony orchestras, as well as on The Tonight Show with both Johnny Carson & Jay Leno, The Late Show with David Letterman, Austin City Limits, Nashville Network, Merv Griffin and Hee Haw. He's played the major showrooms of Las Vegas, Reno & Lake Tahoe, and performed onstage with Alabama, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Dwight Yoakam, and many others. After ten years and over a million miles on the road, Dave retired from touring to concentrate on recording and composing. His work on Murphey's albums paved the way to becoming an in-demand Nashville session musician. He's played keyboards and written string arrangements for both chart-topping and Grammy-winning records, for a wide variety of artists. Also a prolific composer, Hoffner co-wrote the "Lonesome Dove" song for the TV series, and the theme song for Time Warner's ten-hour documentary "The Wild West". His instrumental music has been heard on such TV shows as Good Morning America, 20/20, Saturday Night Live, Dukes of Hazzard, National Geographic TV Specials, and the Arnold Schwarzenegger/Gabriel Byrne film "End of Days". Two of his orchestral compositions were recorded by the San Antonio Symphony, and he received the National Emmy Award Nomination of "Outstanding Achievement in Music" for his score to National Geographic's "Braving Alaska".