Ana Flavia Zuim

The National Association of Teachers of Singing and The Voice Foundation together have named Ana Flavia Zuim as the 2024 Van L. Lawrence Fellowship Award recipient. This prestigious honor includes the opportunity for Zuim to attend the annual Symposium on Care of the Professional Voice, accompanied by a $2,000 award toward her research.

Zuim is a NATS member from the New York City chapter and currently serves as an associate professor of vocal performance at New York University Steinhardt School in the Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions.

As a voice teacher and researcher, Zuim focuses on dosimetry and singers’ perception of vocal fatigue, particularly in the context of Broadway professionals. Her proposal aims to explore safe vocal dosing and assess singers’ perception of vocal fatigue using the EASE score.

She intends to create a catalog of vocal doses from individual Broadway roles, analyzing acoustical strategies that singers use during moments of heavy intensity, and establishing tessituragrams for these roles. Her study aims to provide new parameters for safe amounts of voice use, guide repertoire choices for singers, and contribute to the overall understanding of demands in Broadway performances — especially those requiring heavy belting. This research is expected to benefit Zuim’s teaching by providing a scientific basis for repertoire selection and aiding in the training of belters. The dosimetry data collected will guide singers in implementing pacing strategies for career longevity.

Having published studies in dosimetry alongside Dr. Celia Stewart and Dr. Ingo Titze, Zuim’s work has already made important contributions to the field. The Van L. Lawrence Fellowship will further support her efforts to expand knowledge in dosimetry and its application to the voice performance community.

The National Association of Teachers of Singing and The Voice Foundation extend their congratulations to Ana Flavia Zuim for her achievements and look forward to the impact of her continued work in dosimetry research.

About the Fellowship

The Van L. Lawrence Fellowship was created to honor Van L. Lawrence, M.D., for his outstanding contribution to voice, and particularly to recognize the importance of the interdisciplinary education he fostered among laryngologists and singing teachers. The Voice Foundation and the Foundation Heritage Fund of the NATS Endowment award it jointly. The Fellowship winner is provided with the opportunity to attend the annual Symposium on Care of the Professional Voice and visit laryngologists, speech pathologists, voice scientists, and research centers associated with The Voice Foundation during the fellowship year, with resulting research to be considered for expedited publication in the Journal of Voice or Journal of Singing. The Fellowship winners are members of the National Association of Teachers of Singing who are actively engaged in teaching, have demonstrated excellence in their profession as singing teachers, and have shown interest in and knowledge of voice science. The Fellowship and $2,000 award are intended to provide opportunities for the Fellow to become more thoroughly acquainted with practices, techniques, technology and people involved in laryngology and voice science. It is hoped that the opportunities and contacts provided through the Fellowship experience will enhance the teacher’s ability to do meaningful interdisciplinary research, and will encourage the teacher to apply appropriate voice science advances in the studio.

Past winners of the Van L. Lawrence Fellowship

About Ana Flavia Zuim

A respected individual in her field, Ana Flavia Zuim’s work as a voice scientist has been recently highlighted by CBS. Credited with more than 70 musical theatre productions throughout her career, her work as a musical director and pianist has culminated in several awards, and her research led to findings that can impact the voice field. Her love for sound and the human voice has shaped her career as a musical director/conductor, voice scientist and expert witness. Having learned to speak English after the age of 23, Zuim developed a keen interest in how someone’s accents acoustically impact their speech and as well as the impact of the prosody of language in both speech and singing. Her doctoral dissertation, entitled “Speech Inflection in American Musical Theatre Compositions,” had the collaboration of celebrated composers.

Zuim was invited to be a keynote speaker at the Israeli Voice Association in 2023, and she has conducted seminars and workshops all over the world, including countries such as Japan, Taiwan, Brazil, Turkey, Greece, Canada and Australia. Interested in the intricacy of the vocal mechanism, she serves as an active researcher and served as Latin American Governor of Pava (Pan American Vocology Association) from 2018 to 2022. Her research focuses on vocal health, singer’s perception of vocal function, hydration, dosimetry, vocal acoustics as well as vocal pedagogy of CCM (Contemporary Commercial Music) styles.

The knowledge of voice science and acoustics acquired during her career, combined with her passion for languages paved the way for serving as an expert witness in forensic voice analysis. She serves as an expert witness for forensic voice analysis cases dealing with both the singing and speaking voice, including criminal cases involving death threat messages, contributing within her scope of practice to furthering a more just legal system in which evidence is evaluated through evidence-based, data-driven science.

Among her credits are the Broadway musical Hamilton (Rehearsal Pianist - 2016 till present), the Broadway Across America tours of Billy Elliot (Associate Conductor/Vocal Coach), Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (Keys), Wicked (Keys), Matilda (Keys), Kinky Boots (Keys), The Wizard of Oz (Keys), Annie (Keys), and The Sound of Music (Keys). She also has music directed Billy Elliot at The Ogunquit Playhouse (2014), for which she received an IRNE Award for best musical direction in 2015, and at the Maltz Jupiter Theater (2015), for which she was nominated for a Carbonell Award (2016). She was one of the recipients of The American Prize award for conducting Anything Goes with the NYU Broadway Orchestra (2020) and won the American Prize award for conducting City of Angels (2021).

Zuim served as Director of Vocal Performance at the Steinhardt School at New York University from 2016 to 2022 and was promoted to Associate Music Professor in 2022. A native of Brazil, she moved to the United States in 2003 after completing her bachelor’s degree in music at State University of Londrina (UEL). She now holds a master’s in piano performance (Lynn University, 2006), a doctorate — Ph.D. in Fine and Performing Arts (Florida Atlantic University, 2012) — and a Vocology certification (University of Utah, 2015). Prior to joining the NYU faculty, Zuim served as Director of Contemporary Voice at the Frost School of Music with a secondary appointment as Lecturer of Otolaryngology at the Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami. Her previous experience with contemporary voice and vocal health equipped her to launch a new concentration in contemporary voice at NYU in fall of 2020.

Since prior to college she has enjoyed playing electric bass and toured with a few Brazilian bands, as well as played bass on a few U.S. productions. During her spare time, you can find Zuim exploring a few good golf courses and enjoying the outdoors.

Learn more at anaflaviazuim.com.