Kofi's Story

Kofi was born in 1986 in the “small” city of New York, at Metropolitan Hospital, into a loving Ghanaian family; his father was a diplomat serving with the Ghanaian government. The third child in a growing family, Kofi was still an infant when his family left the United States and returned to Ghana. Over the years that followed, they moved several times, mainly within Africa and Europe, before eventually settling back in the U.S., where Kofi finished high school in Scarsdale, New York. He went on to the University at Buffalo, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in Music Performance (Voice).

Kofi’s love of music grew gradually and organically. He had always enjoyed singing but never intended to take it seriously. As a child, he could often be caught singing along to Whitney Houston and Eternal, but as his voice began to change, he gravitated toward male artists like Usher and groups like Boyz II Men. He remained hooked on R&B and pop for years.

It wasn’t until his family moved from South Africa back to the U.S. that Kofi discovered classical singing. As a regular member of his local church, he was exposed to a wide range of classical repertoire, from Bach, Handel and Vivaldi to Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and Rachmaninoff. He came to love the depth and grandeur of the music performed on major feast days such as Easter, Pentecost and Christmas, and its majestic quality is something he still cherishes. In his senior year of high school, his desire to master singing took hold in earnest. On his own initiative, he ordered a vocal training program called Vocal Release and began teaching himself, practicing the exercises religiously to improve his breath support, power, projection, tone and control. Not long into this self-study, he realized that his love of singing would lead him on a lifelong journey, and that he had only just scratched the surface.

Toward the end of high school, Kofi began searching online for music that would inspire him and feed his appetite for great classical singing. He came across recordings of Luciano Pavarotti and was awestruck by the power and beauty of his sound. Pavarotti, however, was only the beginning. Though Kofi longed to sing in the high-lying tenor range, his anatomy was of a “bassier” persuasion. Blessed with longer, thicker vocal cords, he understood that chasing Pavarotti’s range would not make the best use of the voice he had been given, so he set out to find singers who shared his vocal qualities and range. Time was kind to him: he soon found a website run by Joseph Shore, an opera singer and a vocal master in his own right. Shore had been mentored by the legendary bass Jerome Hines and held him in the highest regard. Kofi paid close attention to Shore’s insights and came to see that there was something truly special about singers like Hines, who belonged to a kind of “golden age” of opera. Hines, along with Cesare Siepi, Nicolai Ghiaurov, Boris Christoff and others, became the singers Kofi looked up to then and still admires today. Siepi has since become his favorite for overall vocal mastery; his complete command of legato is something many basses hope to achieve one day.

Kofi entered college as an undeclared major, though he knew deep down that he wanted to study music. His real passion was developing his voice to become a great singer, a goal he still pursues. During this time, he began listening to Josh Groban, whose style was close to the kind of singing Kofi hoped to master. Here was someone who felt almost like a peer: around the same age, yet singing in a style very different from that of most young artists. It was refreshing, and it showed Kofi that even though classical music isn’t always accessible to a mass audience, it can still be appreciated, loved, supported and sustained. Groban’s album selections later served as a starting point for Kofi’s first performances, albeit with some transposition to suit his voice.

There is much more to this story, so stay tuned as new chapters unfold on Kofi’s journey forward and upward!