Noah Griffin wanted to join a Cole Porter Society. Simple like that, really. He is, after all, a singer drawn to the boundless elegance of Cole Porter music and lyrics. Noah and Cole share history and flair. Each is a Harvard Law School graduate, each has an easy elegance, a feel for euphony and subtle rhythms, winds an audience around their little fingers, and the list goes on. If you know Noah, you know that a Cole Porter Society is meant for him, and look for one he did.
Alas, not so simple after all. There was no Cole Porter Society. Give up? Turn away? Do something else? Not like Noah, a socially fearless fellow, to walk away from a chosen destination so he stared a Cole Porter Society. Simple like that, really. Not just “a” Cole Porter Society, but “The” Cole Porter Society, which has leapt from San Francisco, California through Cole Porter’s birthplace of Peru Indiana to New York. To listen to Noah talk about how The Cole Porter Society took off in what seems to be pretty much a flash from San Francisco to New York is a lesson in pursuing a goal and creating what you know has value just for the joy of the potential.
Noah’s concerts are, and were from the first, played to packed houses. Part of that is Noah’s stage presence, joy and generosity, but a large part of it is the music that people have never forgotten, and to which today’s teens of all cultures still relate as Noah presents it. Noah has tapped into a serious yen for elegance of expression and wants to make it part of the popular musical world again. Sophistication lives everywhere, and to hear about his reception in Peru, Indiana (and how he got there), is a tribute to the power of music to bring people of widely differing societal spheres together. Turns out once again that what comes from the heart enters the heart.