Monika Reneé Hoffman (11 March 1982) is a Swedish-Hungarian singer and songwriter from

Malmö Malmö is the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, third-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm and Gothenburg, and the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, sixth-largest city in Nordic countries, the Nordic region. Located on ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

. Monika Hoffman's was born in Malmö. Her father is Swedish and her mother is Hungarian, so she grew up speaking fluent Hungarian, Swedish, and English. At the age of three she began playing the

violin The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino picc ...

and later on she also began playing the

piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

and the

saxophone The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed on a mouthpiece vibrates to p ...

. As a child and teenager, she went to various music schools and later went on to study at

Berklee College of Music Berklee College of Music () is a Private university, private music college in Boston, Boston, Massachusetts. It is the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world. Known for the study of jazz and modern Music of the United ...

. She was granted the Berklee College of Music World Tour Scholarship and got the opportunity to share the stage with people like

Michael Brecker Michael Leonard Brecker (March 29, 1949 – January 13, 2007) was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. He was awarded 15 Grammy Awards as a performer and composer, received an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music in ...

and Charlie Hayden. In 2005, she auditioned for the Hungarian Megasztar (Idol) and was selected to be part of the final 12. In spite of only placing ninth overall, she became one of the most popular and successful contestants from that season, kickstarting her career as a singer in Hungary. It resulted in two studio albums, the pop oriented "Én vagyok a nő" (I'm the woman), followed by the jazz album "Monika Hoffman And The Scandinavian Knights". The latter one featured one of Hungary’s best jazz-pianists, Róbert Lakatos. Monika Hoffman has twice competed in the Hungarian preselection for the

Eurovision Song Contest The Eurovision Song Contest (), often known simply as Eurovision, is an international Music competition, song competition organised annually by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) among its members since 1956. Each participating broadcaster ...

. In 2008 with the song "Légy te az első" and in 2013 with the song "Hullócsillag".

Discography

Studio albums

*Én vagyok a nö *Monika Hoffman And The Scandinavian Knights *Let's Run Away featuring Paquito D'Rivera *Snowbound

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hoffman, Monika Swedish pop singers Swedish women pop singers Swedish people of Hungarian descent 21st-century Swedish composers 21st-century Swedish women composers 21st-century Hungarian women singers Hungarian pop singers Hungarian women pop singers Hungarian people of Swedish descent 21st-century Hungarian composers Hungarian women composers 21st-century Swedish pianists Swedish women pianists 21st-century Hungarian pianists Hungarian women pianists Living people Singers from Malmö 1982 births 21st-century Swedish women singers Hungarian-language singers of Sweden