Sixth-generation musician and Nashville native Charissa Hoffman found her songwriting voice with her chosen instrument, the ukulele. The fascination with the instrument carried her from Nashville to Boston where she was the first ukulele principal to be accepted at Berklee School of Music, and back to Nashville where Hoffman attracted Béla Fleck, Abigail Washburn, Chris Eldridge, and Nina de Vitry to guest on her upcoming debut LP, Horizon. It arrives on October 9th, 2026.
Her songwriting on the new album draws from “personal experiences with family history, a religious upbringing, and pursuing a singular musical path.” Hoffman hopes that all the songs on Horizon will help other listeners find connection through music in the same way that her younger self experienced.
She says:
When I was a young teen, I was very curious, listening to Pandora and buying CDs from second hand stores, stuff like the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack and Aoife O’Donovan and Gillian Welch—singer-songwriters touching on topics that I hadn’t heard before. I think a lot of folks go through this phase of figuring out who they are, apart from their parents, by listening to music. If someone hears this record and it resonates with them in the same way that those records resonated with me, then it’s a success. I’ll be very happy.
Produced by John Mailander, Horizon opens with the new single, “Forward Motion,” which Hoffman wrote after stepping away from the Southern Baptist denomination.
She comments on that change:
I was picking up on some things that I felt were maybe inconsistent or maybe not coming out of a place of profound love and kindness. So, for the first time in my life I was starting to push back against exactly how I was raised—‘Oh, you’re gonna believe this, you’re gonna say this, you’re gonna follow this’—and I started to say, ‘Hey, let me think this through on my own and decide.’
Hoffman will take the stage at Nashville’s Analog at Hutton Hotel for a special, hometown Horizon release show on November 9th. Tickets are available right here.
