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Deborah Shulman

Deborah Shulman, Singer, Recording Artist, Vocal Coach Growing up in Los Angeles, Deborah Shulman had the great fortune to be nurtured by a family with a very deep passion for music. Her late parents, both singers, lived in the back of their little music store at Carnegie Hall as newlyweds; her father had aspirations of joining the Metropolitan Opera before WWII intervened in his plan. Considering the family tree includes vaudevillians, a Broadway actor, and music lovers of all stripes, it’s easy to believe the Shulman family lore which says baby Deborah was singing before she was talking. When Deborah visited her grandfather, the renowned violin collector Nathan Posner, at his home in Beverly Hills, she’d sit surrounded by the magnificent instruments and sing her heart out. He made her feel like the world’s greatest singer, though he quietly hoped she would become a violinist. Today, Deborah Shulman is a successful singer and recording artist with an eclectic, international resume. The nurturing Deborah received paid off in a more unexpected way for the music world as well: as a vocal coach, Deborah is in demand by the dozens of professional and aspiring singers who come to her for guidance in overcoming large and small vocal challenges.

Deborah developed and refined her coaching skills throughout the history of her own training beginning at age eleven, under the deft tutelage of her father (Irving Shulman). At age thirteen, Deborah Shulman became the youngest student ever accepted to The Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California where she studied opera with an esteemed faculty. In the idyllic Central Coast setting, with guitar virtuosos Pepe, Celin and Angel Romero in residence, Deborah grew enamored of the sound of classical guitar, and developed her attraction to song cycles, while enjoying the camaraderie of great artists and students. She also unsuspectingly began to lay the foundation of her own success as a teacher based on her father’s style wherein simple, joyful instruction supplants doubt and apprehension.

Deborah jumped into the marketplace while still a student, and sang and auditioned at every opportunity. She hopskotched from operatic soprano and recitalist to pop songstress, musical theater comedienne and back again. She loved Schubert and Judy Garland, Schumann and Barbra Streisand. At 15, she attended the Musical Theater Workshop at UCLA with classmates Bonnie Franklin, Judy Kaye and John Rubinstein, and then returned to her roots soon after in the opera program at Cal State Northridge. At the age of 23, when Deborah met the successful actress and singer Ann Jillian at the Civic Light Opera Workshop at the Music Center, she had already been studying professionally for ten years. The two formed a musical partnership that seemed like just what the doctor ordered for a young woman weary from a decade of intense musical study: a way for Deborah to make a living in music, travel the world and blow off a lot of steam that had accumulated. The two singers played clubs for years in London, Sydney, Manila, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and San Francisco under the name Jillian and Shulman and often opened for stars Johnny Ray, Robert Goulet and Carol Lawrence, delivering the wholesome brand of torch that was their specialty. When Jillian left to strike out on her own, Deborah quickly retooled the act as a solo, donned an army issue parka, and took off for the Aleutian Islands on a USO Tour.

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4
Album Review

Deborah Shulman: The Shakespeare Project

Read "The Shakespeare Project" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello


William Shakespeare's works have generated many musical endeavors. Duke Ellington's Such Sweet Thunder (Columbia Records, 1957) and Leonard Bernstein's score for West Side Story are among those which come to mind. In 1941, British composer Arthur Young recorded Shakespeare in Swing (Decca Records, 1941), which featured his compositions over Shakespeare's words. And, in 1964, celebrated British reed player John Dankworth and his wife, Cleo Laine, recorded Shakespeare and All that Jazz, (Fontana Records, 1964), a collection predominantly of Dankworth's jazz ...

2
Album Review

Deborah Shulman: My Heart's In The Wind

Read "My Heart's In The Wind" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky


My Heart's In The Wind is a modest and muted affair, understated in nature yet emotionally stirring in its own way. It's a collection of music that speaks directly to intimacy, loss, and the bends in life's road. The eleven tracks presented on this quiet beauty tap into a variety of emotions, with love, sadness, mourning, life's vagaries, and the grip of memory all serving as wellsprings of creativity for Los Angeles-based vocalist Deborah Shulman. Shulman's parents ...

3
Album Review

Deborah Shulman: Get Your Kicks

Read "Get Your Kicks" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky


Vocalist Deborah Shulman wanted Get Your Kicks to be “a jazz album with a party vibe," which is something far different from her previous record--the wonderful (and weightier) Lost In The Stars: The Music Of Bernstein, Weill & Sondheim (Summit Records, 2012). The differing moods of each album, ultimately, reflect the musical nature of the composer(s) being covered; Bernstein, Weill, and Sondheim have “serious" written over much of their respective work while Troup's tunes belong to a cooler school.

3
Album Review

Deborah Shulman & The Ted Howe Trio: Get Your Kicks: The Music and Lyrics of Bobby Troup

Read "Get Your Kicks: The Music and Lyrics of Bobby Troup" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey


Songwriter Bobby Troup was a master at composing conversational lyrics, and vocalist Deborah Shulman is a master at interpreting such lyrics. That the two come together on Get Your Kicks: The Music and Lyrics of Bobby Troup should be no surprise; also, it is about time that Troup received an homage treatment like this. His lyrics were always 1950s chic, written in a day before political correctness ended the evolution and expansion of the Great American Songbook. What Shulman does ...

2
Album Review

Deborah Shulman: Get Your Kicks

Read "Get Your Kicks" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello


In the vicinity of Staunton, Illinois, a short strip of asphalt heretofore known as “Route 66" lies silently abandoned. A local wag once suggested that the ghost remnant be pulverized into bits and sold to nostalgia types, with a wealth to be had--probably by the wag. Whether or not a fortune is to be made with vocalist Deborah Shulman's Get Your Kicks: The Music and Lyrics of Bobby Troup remains to be seen, but this recording is a treasure trove ...

3
Album Review

Deborah Shulman / Larry Zalkind: Lost In The Stars: The Music Of Bernstein, Weill & Sondheim

Read "Lost In The Stars: The Music Of Bernstein, Weill & Sondheim" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky


The respective output from compositional icons Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Weill and, to a lesser extent, Stephen Sondheim has frequently been putty in jazz musicians' and arrangers' hands, proving that malleability is a sine qua non for long-range success in writing; genius-level composing skills, of course, also tend to help. While the actual act of interpreting the work of these three men is hardly original at this point, the fashion by which vocalist Deborah Shulman, trombonist Larry Zalkind ...

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"Deborah Shulman's previous recording 2 for the road was, in my opinion, one of the finest vocal albums of 2007. Now, she's back with another one called My Heart's in the Wind and like the first it's a truly great one. This is a worthy companion to the first release. Well done Deborah!" Jacques Emond, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

"Deborah . . . I've loved your singing ever since those first notes of '2 for the road' . . . This new CD does not disappoint. The sweet flow of tunes bathes me in a wash of lush romantic feelings." Mitchell Mendys, WKNH

“I just reviewed your CD and it is a truly great listen. It will get a lot of air play on Jazz 88. You are SMOKING.”

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Primary Instrument

Vocals

Willing to teach

Intermediate to advanced

Credentials/Background

Deborah has taught voice and coached musical theatre and opera, both in Los Angeles and New York. She has served on the faculty of the Musical Theatre Workshop of the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera at the Music Center and the American Center for Musical Theatre in Hollywood. She is presently the head of the Vocal Department at the Performing Arts Center in Northridge. Her vocal clients have included pop stars, Bette Midler, Jennifer Warnes and Linda Ronstadt, and rock stars, David Lee Roth and Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes, among others

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

The Shakespeare...

Summit Records
2019

buy

My Heart's In The Wind

Summit Records
2015

buy

Get Your Kicks

Summit Records
2013

buy

Get Your Kicks: The...

Summit Records
2013

buy

Lost In The Stars:...

Summit Records
2012

buy

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