Kim Davenport

Adjunct Professor of Musicology

Kim Davenport has been working as a professional musician since her teen years, with extensive work as a collaborative artist. As a performer, she is primarily interested in new and under-represented works. Her primary focus in recent years has been to perform and record solo and chamber works of African American composers. Kim holds undergraduate degrees in music and piano performance from the University of Washington, and completed her Master of Music in piano performance at Northwestern University.

Kim maintains a private piano studio in Tacoma, and also teaches a variety of music classes at the University of Washington Tacoma and University of Puget Sound. In this work, she is able to draw connections between her life as a musician and her more academic research and writing interests. She is a published scholar of local history, with a focus on Tacoma's musical past. Her textbook for use in non-major music classes, "Learning to Listen," is forthcoming in Autumn 2023.

Kim was active for nearly 20 years in the critically acclaimed Duo Alea, the bass clarinet/piano duo she formed with her father, Michael Davenport. The Duo’s performances and recordings brought local and world premieres of several important works for bass clarinet & piano. The Duo were also active in music publishing, forming the independent firm Alea Publishing & Recording in 1997 to produce their own recordings and make available music for the bass clarinet.