TOBY HOFFMAN was born into a family of musicians, his father was the legendary conductor Irwin Hoffman, his brother is the great cellist Gary Hoffman and his mother, Esther Glazer was with whom he began his musical training on violin at the age of 6, then continued his violin studies with Paul Doktor, graduating from Juilliard School with Bachelor and Master degrees. He later studied conducting in Finland with Jorma Panula, where he became a professor at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki.

In his distinguished career spanning three decades, he has performed at many of the world's most prestigious international music festivals, including Salzburg, Ravinia, Mostly Mozart, Stavanger, Marlboro, La Jolla, Saratoga and Hong Kong. He has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and La Scala. As guest conductor and soloist, he has performed with numerous orchestras around the world, such as the Philadelphia Orchestra, the National Orchestra of Belgium, the National Symphony Orchestra of Belgium, Taiwan, the Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie, the Het Gelders Orchestra, the Johannesburg Philharmonic, the Cali Philharmonic Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra of Costa Rica, etc.

Mr. HOFFMAN has collaborated on numerous tours and projects with Maurizio Pollini and Salvatore Accardo, with whom he recorded all of Mozart's works for violin and viola, including the Sinfonia Concertante, the Duos for violin and viola, the Divertimento for trio and strings and the Six viola quintets, as well as many other chamber works by Beethoven, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Verdi, Dvorak and Chausson. Mr. HOFFMAN'S extensive discography includes an album of French chamber music with Andre Previn, as well as several recordings with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Marlboro Music Festival.

Mr. HOFFMAN has been guest violist of the Emerson, Jerusalem, Ysaye, Fine Arts and Tokyo string quartets. In 1988, at the Kuhmon Festival in Finland, he gave the world premiere of Alfred Schnittke's Piano Quartet. 

For ten years, he was artistic director of Bargemusic, helping it become one of the most popular concert venues in New York City.

As a pedagogue, he has held the position of Artist-in-Residence at Harvard University and has been a member of the faculty of Carnegie-Mellon University and the Steans Institute of the Ravinia Festival. He was Professor of Chamber Music and Orchestral Studies at the Universidade do Minho in Portugal. He has given master classes at the New England Conservatory, Manhattan School of Music, Cincinnati College-Conservatory, TNUA University in Taiwan, Citta di Castello, Livorno, Kuhmo, Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam and the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Belgium.