Carmen Woodruff

Carmen Woodruff Performance Resume and Bio

She sings from her truth: heartfelt, soul-stirring, and honest. Sharing stories and dialogue from personal adventures, trials, and successes, she leads her audience through time while simultaneously embracing the possibilities of tomorrow. Captivating audiences since grade school, Detroit metropolitan native Carmen Woodruff was first introduced to jazz at the age of 11. “Nothing can compare to the beautiful lyrics of standards. I never grow tired of performing and delivering them.”

Her passion has led her to South Africa, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and most recently Spain, where she’s played a part in festivals, clinics, corporate events and productions, including her self-written and self-produced one-woman show Ella and Me: A Conversation with Music, which debuted at Valencia's Jimmy Glass Jazz Bar in 2015.

Stateside, she’s honed her skills at Busch Gardens, Walt Disney World Resort and the former Detroit Montreux Jazz Festival, emerging as the “Teal Jazz Vocalist of the Year” twice. Learning from the greats, including Motown’s Martha Reeves, Ursula Walker, Sunny Wilkinson and Peter Eldridge, Woodruff has shared the stage with Marlena Shaw, Don and Alicia Cunningham.

Carmen earned her BA degree in Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She then joined the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ (UNLV) music program after working for nearly a decade in publicity and marketing, graduating with her second bachelor’s in music in December of 2011. She was accepted into the Berklee College of Music's Contemporary Performance program where she earned her master of music on the Valencia, Spain campus followed by a post-master’s fellowship on Berklee’s Boston campus, where she was coached and inspired by a multitude of top names in jazz and contemporary music.