Eric
Hofbauer

Eric Hofbauer
and EHX

EHX is Eric Hofbauer’s most personal project to date — a fluid ensemble that synthesizes the defining threads of his career: conceptual depth, transformative arranging, and a fearlessly eclectic repertoire. The X does double duty: it signals shifting instrumentation, and it signals what Hofbauer calls “Gen X post-style repertoire” — a book with no boundaries of composer or genre, drawn entirely from music that has shaped his life.

Björk, Radiohead, and Sigur Rós sit alongside Joni Mitchell, the Beatles, and Jimi Hendrix, which in turn connect to deeper jazz cuts by Abbey Lincoln and Eddie Harris. The repertoire reads like an autobiography — which is precisely the point.

One of the most distinctive and restlessly inventive guitarists in contemporary jazz, Hofbauer occupies a creative space where modern jazz, free improvisation, third stream, and deep Americana collapse into something entirely his own. A graduate of Oberlin Conservatory and New England Conservatory — where he studied with Paul Bley and Ran Blake — he has spent three decades building one of the most conceptually ambitious bodies of work in jazz guitar.

His most recent project before EHX, Waking Up! (2023), transformed Greta Thunberg’s UN speech into a searing four-movement jazz suite. He chairs the Jazz and Contemporary Music Department at the Longy School of Music of Bard College and has taught jazz history at Emerson College for over two decades.