Merav Hoffman

Music is pretty much the only thing that keeps me going in times of stress or too little sleep. I listen to just about everything, with the possible exception of R&B and certain kinds of opera. Favorites are really too numerous to list, but you should check out Billy Pilgrim, Cloud Cult, Oysterband, and any musical by William Finn, particularly Elegies, which I personally think is brilliant and under appreciated.

In addition to an ever growing music collection, I also have multiple musical partners and musical projects at any given time.

I ran Contata for two three year cycles and then my friend Josh took over. I spent that cycle doing Programming/Guest Liaison duties. Then I was back in the hot seat, co-chairing Contata with Josh. Shortly thereafter, the con consolidated its three branches, and became NEFilk (pronounced "any-filk"> and we ran it online a few times as NEWhere during the first few years of the Covid-19 Pandemic. The con is on what may be a permanent hiatus. Our historical website is here. NEFilk was a convention for science fiction folk music. What's science fiction folk music? Well, it's like normal folk music, it's just got more songs about travelling to other planets, time travel, losing your lover due to time dilation, and other subjects that rarely come up on mainstream radio. If that sounds great to you, come on down to Parsippany in 2017, and check it out. We call it Filk. There's a story that goes with that.

Most frequently, I can be seen making music with Lady Mondegreen my band of more than two decades. There are many fabulous Ladies Mondegreen, and we've started to expand again, due to band member attrition and exhaustion. We have a lot of fun, and we intend to keep having it, with as many members as possible. 2010 was the first time that I personally performed with every single one of our members. Prior to that I hadn't performed with the fabulous Talis Kimberley, who is a wonderful performer in her own right. Lately Talis has been making more North American conventions, so we've seen her for long enough to rehearse!

With schedules and other commitments being what they are, the core members of the band, myself, Batya Wittenberg and Seanan McGuire haven't had a huge amount of time together, but we still do a lot of singing when we're all on the same side of the country.

The Lady Mondegreen DVD is now available. Check the website for details in the FAQ. It's available from many filk dealers. If you can't find one locally, feel free to e-mail me at the address on the Lady Mondegreen website and we'll find a way to get one for you.

Batya and I also perform as The Funny Things, which is a reference to a Dr. Seuss book, points if you know which one. It stems from a long-held in-joke, but if you've met us, or seen us perform, that probably won't surprise you. Batya and I have been performing together for the better part of 20 years, both on and off stage, and when we do something, we do it with a great deal of slapstick humor, and good old fashioned mishagos. It might be the hallmark of our style.

I keep meaning to do a solo album. I even have a spreadsheet with all the arrangements and who I would ask to play on which tracks, with the instrumentation, and etc. but I never can seem to get the time together to record the scratch tracks, so I can send them out to the folks I have in mind and say, 'hey, want to help me make an album? It'll be fun!' As such, it probably won't be out any time soon. In the meantime, I hear Jerrie Adkins has bootleg recordings of my concerts.

Meanwhile, here are some of my songs.

Goldberry

Goldberry? What's that? In 2007 our friend Sheryl was being honored at convention and asked if Batya and Josh and Lisa and I would do that impromptu thing where we sing together so that we could be in her concert. So we knocked together a few songs and got up to perform. A running joke started that the name of our band was "the ConCom" due to our activies with Contata. We insisted that we were "not the Concom" and to avoid getting stuck with that as a band name, we chose Goldberry, which felt right. We've added our friends Meredith and my husband Terry to the band, and we have a few drop-in members at various times. We're fairly well established now, but interupted due to Covid-19.

Other musical co-conspirators

I would be remiss if I didn't say that I've been collaborating with the fabulous Erin Bellavia of Via Bella. We've written several songs together, one of which, Dear Seanan was nominated for a Pegasus Award. Via Bella are currently working on a second album.

I've now written a couple of songs with Batya Wittenberg and Emily Lewis of Sassafrass, including the infamous Goat Rodeo song.

So, in 2011, Ben Newman approached me with an idea for a musical that would grow into his Walk in the Day, a musical in which I have now played two of the four major female roles. I now aspire to play all six female roles, though the roles of the two female initiates are fairly interchangeable, and there's a long line of women ahead of me to play Sirah, so it may be a while. However, I do hold the distinction of being the only person who has appeared on both all three of the extant cast recordings, on different coasts, within six months of each other. Yes, organizational madness was involved. Also, airplanes.

I also spend a lot of time hanging out with Jordan Mann who I met in high school, lo these many years ago. Jordan writes fabulous musicals with his writing partner Jeff Thomson. You should check it out. Go on. I'll wait.

When I recreated this website, I was doing a music diet, described below. Since I think it's neat, I'm going to keep that paragraph here. If you want an update on what I'm doing with my listening, see below.

So, the music diet is over, and I have discovered that, as with most diets, the fact of having done all the work of getting my iTunes unlistened folder down to zero has not been an incdentive in being cautious about buying new music. I am not acquiring a lot of music at the moment, but I have discovered some terrific artists, and rediscovered some I knew about but hadn't explored thoroughly. Current listening includes David Francy, Antje Duvekot, and Delta Rae. I am also on Spotify. Feel free to come follow my playlists. I have way too many.