Feature: Dorian Woodruff - The Complete Aesthete

People often speak of the balance between nature and nurture, and how that balance informs the character of those, everywhere, who inhabit this planet. Are the interests, the values, the personality traits that make up the people that we are pre-determined, or are they learned from those who influence our upbringing? The easiest answer is that it is a combination of both.

Dorian Woodruff is living proof of that.

Born into a distinguished family, this singer who is about to debut his new show STUDIO MUSICIAN: THE MUSIC OF MANILOW, has always had a passion for that which is beautiful. From an early age, Woodruff recalls having an innate interest in fashion, a dedication that informs his life, to this day, and one of which he was aware, long before his maternal grandmother, Pearl Sadler, intervened by way of educating him on the ways of an affluent world. Mrs. Sadler, a most elegant woman of breeding and taste, determined that Dorian and his brother would be sophisticated gentlemen and began their training, early in their lives, vowing, "I'm going to instill culture in these boys if it kills them." Symphonies, museums, theater, art shows, and many self-administered lessons in the humanities followed as Woodruff and his Grandmother became the family's own personal version of Mame and Patrick Dennis. At five, young Dorian announced to his mother that he would only attend the wedding of a family friend if he could wear his seersucker trousers and blue blazer, an idea that did not resonate with Pearl's daughter, who denied the request. The five-year-old sought support from Sadler, who promptly rescued the precocious child from forced fashion and from the wedding.

Clothing was only one of the duo's pastimes, but appearance did always count, which is why Grandmother Pearl dressed the six-year-old version of Little Dorian in a red velvet blazer so that he could perform in a school talent show, leaning in the crook of the piano and singing for the student body the song his grandmother had taught him, "Love For Sale" - not that he knew the story that was being told in the song. All the little one knew is that his musically gifted best friend was to be trusted and emulated and that they would be best friends for as long as it was possible which, in the end, was thirty-six years of his life, a lifetime of adventures for the twosome. Like the time when twenty-something Dorian instructed Pearl to dress for a night out and promptly took her dancing at a gay bar, where she was the Belle of the Bar, with everybody clamoring to know her, to hear her story, to simply be near the woman of substance and style. That substance and style would be shared with Woodruff for the rest of his life.

Fabulosity is not all that Pearl Sadler bestowed upon her grandson. His first instructor in life, Mrs. Sadler gave Dorian a solid respect for the value to be placed on the teachers of the world and of his own world. To this day Dorian Woodruff remembers the names of every teacher of import to have left an indelible mark on his training. Whether it is Paul Blackstock, the voice teacher who taught him to interpret songs at the age of ten with "Close To You" or his junior high school piano teacher Anne Chamley, whose lessons always ended with a Cole Porter composition (the reason why Woodruff rushed through the lessons), Dorian respects his teachers and his directors. Even now, when discussing STUDIO MUSICIAN director Lina Koutrakos, Woodruff pays out the praise and calls upon compliments, in order to communicate the esteem in which he holds his colleague, one he knew many years before actually embarking on a single artistic journey together.

In the mid-nineteen-nineties, Koutrakos and Woodruff crossed paths in the Manhattan cabaret and club scene repeatedly, she a rock singer/songwriter trying to make it big, and he a musician and singer looking for work, anywhere he could get it. That anywhere could be NYC, Las Vegas, Texas, Nashville, or D.C., all places that Dorian lived for extended periods of time while completing college, and working showrooms, recording studios, Opryland, theme parks, and picking up a large family of friends and colleagues along the way ("I believe that theme park show performers are so underrated" ). With these years of travel beginning to take a toll on him, Dorian decided that his relocation to D.C. was not working out and that it was time for a change. He walked into work, gave his notice, got into a car, and drove back to New York City. He hadn't been in The District of Columbia for one year; but it was there that he attended a workshop in a church being taught by that girl, Lina Koutrakos, that he had met twenty years earlier. Upon his return to New York, he placed the call that would make her his director and his coach, both roles she still fills today.

The creation of a new show is not to be rushed for Woodruff, a concept appreciated by Koutrakos, who teaches the value of taking a deep dive into the subtext of every song one sings, every lyric, every thought, every story. This is why there are, at times, years that pass between the shows he produces. Eighteen months went into the preparation and production of his Award-nominated show I BELIEVE IN LOVE, and when those ten performances were finished, he found himself, repeatedly, being asked when his next show would be - a question to which he had no answer.

"I kept vigilantly looking for that inspiration, and every idea that I came up with, it didn't happen. And I probably spent a couple thousand dollars on rehearsal sessions and music arrangements for these different ideas. Then one day I took my last vacation day - I left the house with no phone, and I took one of those little spiral notebooks and I just got on the subway and took it till it stopped. I got out and started walking. I found myself at a restaurant. I walked in, and over the bar was a picture of Frank, Sammy, and Dean. The Thursday before this, I was sitting in the conference room at work and a colleague mentioned something about a woman in her building on East 77th street who had decorated her door so much for the holidays that the door could not be opened. It reminded me of Mrs. O'Quinn in my building, growing up; so I sat down at this bar and opened up that flip pad and started writing about Mrs. O'Quinn ... and then Mrs. Johnson.... and then I kept writing and writing about all these different people. I filled up this little notebook! The flyers for their New Year's Eve celebration were there and they were 8.5 x 11, so I took a whole stack, turned it over, and started writing. When I got home, I had my laptop open and I started transcribing everything I had written, and I shot it over to Lina; all this time goes by and I didn't hear from her. An hour and a half later I get an email from her: "Normally I just scan through these - I sat here and read every word. KEEP CREATING." And I knew that was the new show. It was three years between I BELIEVE IN LOVE and WELCOME HOME."

What appeals to Woodruff most is the stories that are all around. With a rich family history filled with characters and events, he always finds himself fascinated by the stories, by the histories, and the philosophy that the telling of stories is really important "because it gives you an insight into people; it opens a private door that not many people have the opportunity to walk through" and that, by putting these stories into shows, he passes them on. There was a time when Dorian did a little acting, but it was not by choice, it was because he was offered the work. He truly believes that his place is in the intimate cabaret rooms where he can reach out, touch people, look into their eyes, sing directly to them.

"You are totally exposed because you can't hide behind anything, and in that moment you can connect with the person sitting right in front of you, you can connect with the person sitting in the back row, you can connect with the person that's tending bar... and that appeals to me more than anything. Someone asked me one time "Wouldn't you like to be in a Broadway hit?" If it happens, great; if it doesn't happen, that's fine, too. But I think being in a Broadway show, the libretto is written, the backstory is written, you're not really bringing anything personal to it - it's someone else's story. In cabaret, you can take any piece of music, apply your backstory, answer the questions for every one of the lyrics and make it your own. I'm not saying that people on Broadway don't do that... I just don't think I can do that."

These days, the velvet and brooch-wearing Woodruff actually is telling his personal story. Though the title of his new show has a famous name in it, the stories are all Dorian's because he was, indeed, a studio musician as was Mr. Manilow, and this is his opportunity to really meld the telling of his history with the cannon of a legendary music maker with whom he had a brief association, and it is his associations in life from which he derives much of his joy. Remarking that he has met many incredible people during his years in the music industry, Dorian points out that the cabaret community of New York is filled with people of backbone and quality, naming Alex Rybeck, Josephine Sanges, Ari Axelrod, Stacy Sullivan, Jeff Harnar, Koutrakos and antiquing chum Joanne Halev as some of the people who nurture his being. He also notes the fact that, after nearly a decade in the business here, he has learned how to distance himself from some of the innate negativity that comes with any show business community, preferring to surround himself with those people who remind him of the teachers and mentors who built the foundation upon which he stands today, and once the negativity is at a safe distance, he doesn't look back: "I think I'm a lot like my great grandmother, with selective memory."

As for the antiquing, the fashion, and his famous jewelry collection, they are simply extensions of the joyous existence first created by Nana Pearl, but the singing is the most joyous: "Jewelry, looking at a painting, playing the piano are all things that give me joy, but singing gives me more joy than anything." Still, it doesn't stop the weekend trips upstate with Halev to acquire new furniture, art, objets d'owl of any nature, cufflinks, and brooches.

"The jewelry started... this ring, on my right hand, third finger, was a birthday gift from my Nana Pearl when I was in the third grade. It was too big and I had yarn around it, it fits now. Nana was engaged five times before my Grandfather, and when I learned this I said, "But you kept the rings," and she told me, "Well, they were fools to give them to me." When my Grandmother died, my mother didn't want the jewelry - she told me to get rid of it, but I wouldn't do that. I brought the jewelry back with me and, later, when her mind had changed, she would call and say, 'Whatever happened to that piece of jewelry?' and I would get it out of the vault and send it to her. Every time it happens." In the meantime, Woodruff is happy to wear the jewelry himself - not the rings, obviously, but definitely the brooches, and definitely never onstage. "I can't have people looking at the jewelry instead of my face."

For this moment in time, Dorian says he is happy - happy in his work, happy with his art, happy at his home, and happy with his circle of friends.

"Someone asked me how I can be happy because I don't have someone in my life. I said, 'You don't have to have someone in your life to be happy. If you can't be happy by yourself, how are you going to be happy with someone? I am happy. I have a wonderful life."

And asked if there isn't something, anything for which he has a wish? A dream of some kind?

"I'd like to play Carnegie Hall."

Don't think he won't make it happen, either. Dorian Woodruff is a master at manifestation, so get your tickets now. Besides, it's Carnegie Hall - Dorian Woodruff will be right at home.

Dorian Woodruff STUDIO MUSICIAN: THE MUSIC OF MANILOW plays Pangea on November 5 and 12, and December 10 and 17 at 7:00 pm. For information and tickets visit the Pangea website HERE.

Portrait photographs by Stephen Mosher

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