Los Angeles Doctors Symphony Orchestra
Ivan Shulman, Conductor

    As Music Director of the Los Angeles Doctors Symphony Orchestra since 1990, Ivan Shulman is as knowledgeable as anyone in understanding that path to the podium is not always a straight line. He grew up in a musical family, having studied oboe with his father, the noted oboist Harry Shulman, who was the principal oboist of the NBC Symphony in New York under Arturo Toscanini.  In his youth, he spent time at the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico, in Marlboro, as well as in Aspen, where he studied orchestration with Gordon Hardy, composing with Charles Jones and Darius Milhaud, and began his conducting studies with Walter Susskind and Wolfgang Vacano.  He was an oboist in the New York Youth Symphony orchestra, having made his Carnegie Hall debut on the same concert as Itzhak Perlman.

    After many years as an orchestral musician, Ivan Shulman was afforded an opportunity to push the proverbial envelope of musical development, and so he continued his conducting studies in Aspen and elsewhere, participating in workshops of the American Symphony Orchestra League, the Conducting Guild and privately in Los Angeles.  Since becoming the Music Director of the Los Angeles Doctors Symphony Orchestra in 1990, he has conducted the orchestra in concerts in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Santa Fe, New Mexico. 

    In 1994, he led the combined forces of the Los Angeles Doctors Symphony and the University of California at San Francisco Orchestra in a highly acclaimed performance of the Mahler Sixth Symphony in San Francisco.  He has appeared as guest conductor with the Beach Cities Symphony in Torrance, the West Coast Symphony in Santa Barbara, the Brentwood-Westwood Symphony, the Topanga Philharmonic, the West Hollywood Orchestra, the Dalhousie University Chorus in Halifax, Nova Scotia and the Kenai Peninsula Orchestra in Alaska.  He was also the conductor of the South Coast Reading Orchestra in Santa Barbara for four seasons.  In 2001, he conducted Don Giovanni with the Nevada State Opera and made his European conducting debut with the Pleven Philharmonic, in Bulgaria.   He was honored at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 2004 as a Visiting Professor of the Medical Humanities.

    In 2005 he led the Doctors Symphony in a staged performance of Carmen, again with the Nevada State Opera.  With the Doctors Symphony he has commissioned new works from local composers, and has worked extensively with young performers through the Music Teachers Association of California.  Although his musical tastes are broad, he has a special interest in the music from the Holocaust, having performed the American premiere of the Third Symphony of Erwin Schulhoff several years ago.  He regularly serves as a judge for scholarship and musical competitions of the Young Musicians Foundation and the Music Teachers Association of California.  He has served on the Music Advisory Board of the YMF and on the Board of Directors of Chamber Music LA.