Marganita Vogt-Khofri
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Marganita "Maggie" Vogt-Khofri (born Marganita Khofri, Persian: مارگانیتا خفری ) is an Assyrian classical musician and vocalist, born in Kermanshah, Iran in 1952. She is the daughter of Jeni and Paulus Khofri, the famous Assyrian composer, maestro and painter.
[edit] Biography
Music and the arts were the legacy of the Khofri family. Vogt-Khofri began studying piano at the age of eleven at the Tehran Conservatory of Music and moved to the United States to complete high school. While still a student, she began studying Christian spiritual songs and took up playing the guitar.[1]
Continuing her musical studies, she returned to Tehran and attended the University of Tehran where she earned her Master's Degree in piano, opera and musicology. By eighteen, she joined the Tehran Opera House, known as Talar-e Vahdat[2] formerly Talar-e Roudaki[3], as a vocalist (soprano and alto) where she performed for twelve years. Later she became the director of the Women’s Conservatory of Tehran for many years.
Additionally, Vogt-Khofri was also a folkloric dancer and member of the Assyrian Folkloric Dancing Ensemble, under the direction of Madam Lily Tamraz. Vogt-Khofri was selected as a folkloric representative by the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Arts to participate in the Arts Festival at the Folkloric Music and Dances of Worldwide Nations in Cannes, France.
Vogt-Khofri was an active member of Saint Joseph’s Assyro-Chaldean Church Choir of Tehran under the direction of her father, Paulus Khofri.
Vogt-Khofri also performed with the Sirinas Quartet (“singing bird quartet”), an Assyrian quartet group of performers and musicians that included Joseph Malik, Shubert Khodabandi and Johnny Khangaldi. The quartet promoted Assyrian spiritual and popular songs based on advanced musical arrangements accepted by the Music Academy. The Sirinas Quartet performed several concerts for the Assyrian community in Iran and also for foreign cultural centers of the Goethe German Institute, the Denmark Cultural Center and the Dutch Cultural Center located in Iran. Sirinas Quartet produced an album called Christmas with Assyrian songs for the family.[4]
In 1984, Vogt-Khofri, her husband Edwin Vogt and two children moved to Zurich, Switzerland where they now live.
Currently, Vogt-Khofri is a member of the Grand Choir of St. George Cathedral that is accompanied by the Symphony Orchestra of Zurich and the Opera Choir of Zurich[5] . Additionally, she is a member of the Bach Singers' Society. She is also a piano teacher and has developed her own unique method of teaching.
Vogt-Khofri is a dedicated Assyrian woman who does volunteer work for Karitas, [6] a division of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement in Switzerland[7] helping Assyrian, Iranian and other people of the Middle-East regions to process petition papers for immigration purposes, predominantly to Canada and the United States.[8][9]
[edit] References
- Nineveh magazine, Vol 22, #1&2