RON DROTOS AND FRIENDS Return to Pangea for Encore Jazz Performance

Jazz pianist and Broadway veteran Ron Drotos will return to Pangea, with vocalists Lina Koutrakos, Dorian Woodruff, and Juliet Ewing, for an encore performance of jazz, bossa, ballads, and blues, Thursday, October 29 at 7:00 PM. Expect many musical surprises as Drotos plays jazz piano solos and each vocalist is featured in a mini-set. Ron Drotos and Friends: Featuring Lina Koutrakos, Dorian Woodruff, and Juliet Ewing, premiered at Pangea on April 24.

Music Director Ron Drotos is a jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. Drotos received a Bachelor's degree in Music Composition from The University of Connecticut. He studied jazz piano with Dr. Billy Taylor, Walter Bishop, Jr., Harold Danko, and Ellen Rowe, and worked as assistant to the baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan. In New York City, he served as Associate Music Director and created orchestrations for the Broadway musical Swinging On A Star, which received a Tony Award nomination for Best Musical in 1995. Additional Broadway credits include Smokey Joe's Café, The Life, and Fosse. Drotos has orchestrated for the New York Pops Orchestra, with whom he has appeared several times at Carnegie Hall. He has been featured as Music Director on the 92nd St. Y's famed Lyrics and Lyricists series, and has performed with vocalists Julius LaRosa, Judy Collins, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Nell Carter, Giacomo Gates and Juliet Ewing. In addition, he has taught in Alaska at the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival annually since 1999, and has been inducted into the festival's Hall of Fame.

Lina Koutrakos is an award-winning singer/songwriter/teacher/director based in New York City. As a singer, she has repeatedly received rave reviews from The New York Times to Billboard Magazine in both rock and roll and cabaret and has been awarded Cabaret's most prestigious awards for 'Best Female Vocalist' and 'Entertainer of the Year,' multiple times. For three decades Koutrakos has been a New York City musical fixture - as both soloist and as a director and performance coach. Her directorial nods include being a 4-time winner for 'Best Director' from the MAC Association as well as a lifetime Backstage Bistro Award-Winner for 'Best Director.'. Koutrakos was on staff as a Master Teacher for years at both the Eugene O'Neill Cabaret Symposium and The Yale Cabaret Conference. She was the first Master Teacher with The St. Louis Cabaret Conference and co-founded NYC's Summer in the City yearly workshop on weekends. She has since gone on to start her own performance workshop 'Performance Connection,' which umbrellas many ongoing and specialty workshops and seminars both online and in person. The Advance Performance Workshop in NYC has produced many award-winning performers and shows over the last 2 decades. Her singing and being the founder of the Midwest Cabaret Conference in Chicago for 10 years won her the 'Gold Coast' Award with the Chicago Cabaret Professionals in 2019. She spearheads an annual Advanced Performance Workshop on the island of Mykonos. Due to her performance workshops with full bands to one-on-one clients across the U.S. to her own award-winning original material and one woman shows, Koutrakos has been called a 'Walking Master Class' by Billboard Magazine. 

Dorian Woodruff is an accomplished cabaret singer and has performed in clubs internationally while providing touring and studio vocals. In New York, He has appeared at Joe's Pub, 54 Below, Don't Tell Mama, The Beach Café, and Pangea. His shows Welcome Home: Everybody Has a Story and Studio Musician: The Music of Manilow were nominated for MAC Awards. He has appeared in Chicago at Davenport's, The Jazz Cave at the Nashville Jazz Workshop, and the New York Cabaret Convention in Lincoln Center's Rose Hall. His most recent show, The Lyrics of Alan and Marilyn Bergman, celebrates the lyrics of Alan and Marilyn Bergman with music created with some of the greatest composers of our time including Marvin Hamlisch, Dave Grusin, and Johnny Mandel. Cabaret Scenes says, 'Many songwriters of today would be lucky to have their more thoughtful material rendered by such a thoughtful and caring vocalist."