Steven Chicurel
Associate Professor

Although trained as a concert pianist, "Doctor Steve" has chosen to make his career in musical theatre. Doctoral research in the music of George Gershwin enabled him, in a scholarly setting, to bridge the gap between the disciplines of music and theatre. His career as a pianist and accompanist in a concert setting has lead to performances in numerous locations around the United States and in Europe. Recently, he accompanied Klea Blackhurst in her award-winning one-woman revue, "Everything the Traffic Will Allow: The Songs and Sass of Ethel Merman."

 

Musical theatre has been his chief passion, and to that end, Dr. Steve has been a part of nearly 100 theatrical productions as musical director, conductor, pianist, and vocal arranger. He has worked for companies that have taken him to perform in 12 countries on 4 continents. In the U.S.A. he has worked for regional theatres that include Flat Rock Playhouse, Bucks County Playhouse, and Hampton Playhouse. He has been a part of a number of successful world- and regional-premiere productions, among them "Pageant" (Michael Rice et al), "A Belonging Place" (C. Robert Jones), and "Gilligan's Island: The Musical (Sherwood & Lloyd Schwartz and Laurence Juber). Certificates of esteem and distinguished service from national and international organizations and governments attest to his contributions to musical theatre.

 

Dr. Chicurel is proud to be a vanguard licensee and Certified Course Instructor of Estill Voice Training Systems®, and brings the Estill Model not only to the UCF musical theatre curriculum, but to professional voice users world wide. He continues to lead energetic workshops in the U.K., Australia, The Caribbean and Europe. He presented a landmark paper, "Three-Tier Voice Training for Musical Theatre: A Non-Traditional Approach," at the First World Voice Congress in Oporto, Portugal, and was also the first transatlantic faculty to teach at the Oxenfoord International Summer Music School in St. Andrews, Scotland. In 2005, he was a keynote speaker for the Association of Teachers of Singing (AOTOS) while on a lecture tour of Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide, Australia. He co-presented the paper "A Design for Collaborative Voice Assessment, Rehabilitation, and Training" at the 6th Pan-European Voice Conference, The Royal Academy of Music, in London, England.

 

Dr. Chicurel is the co-author of Geography of the Voice: Anatomy of an Adam's Apple as well as Score: Music Theory for Musical Theatre (the latter to be published in 2007 by Scarecrow Press). He has Bachelors, Masters, and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in piano performance from Mars Hill College, The Peabody Conservatory of Music/Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Kentucky respectively.

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