"You can never go home again", North Carolina writer Thomas Wolfe, famously wrote. Well perhaps it just takes a little longer, though in the case of Wolfe's fellow North Carolinian Marc Hoffman I suspect the `Long Way Home' is the ever winding road to a heavenly destination.Whatever the truth, `Long Way Home' the album presents nine piano pieces in a style that might be described as somewhere between the contemporary instrumental approach of Windham Hill and folk Americana with a nod in the direction of Aaron Copland. The Copland influence is particularly notable in the dignified peace of `Liberty Street' and the open hearted `Zara'. Title piece meanwhile offers a nostalgic grandeur which harks back equally to traditional American hymns and epic old-style Hollywood big romantic movie themes. It would be a delight to hear a fully orchestrated version.Mentioning Windham Hill might give the impression the disc is laidback New Age, while rather the rigorously composed pieces owe equally as much to the repetitive rhythmic structures of minimalism, with for instance `Mary Go `Round' offering a thoroughly worked musical logic which does indeed take a diverting journey in out and round about its robust central melody. `Grey Skies' is an impressionistic water color, the title perhaps a tongue-in-cheek nod to the composer's association with England. There's not a note wasted as each piece makes its own mark.Hoffman performs his own music eloquently - I've seen him in concert in England and he is as adept with an introspective melody as he is with a raise the roof anthem or a blues based ballad - and this collection represents his piano music well. (To hear him as singer-songwriter try his `Dream of God' disc). The only caveat for some people might be the relatively short 32 minutes running time. But then once upon a time most albums only ran this long, and unlike many current releases `Long Way Home' gets to journey's end long before outstaying its welcome. You can find out more about the composer at [...]