About the Music

The composer shares the following note about her Mingus Variations (2024) for solo piano:

Mingus Variations explores Goodbye Pork Pie Hat, one of my favorite jazz tunes. Bassist and composer Charles Mingus (1922-1979) wrote Goodbye Pork Pie Hat as a tribute to Lester Young, the legendary jazz saxophonist, after his passing in 1959. The title refers to Young’s signature pork pie hat, which he often wore. The piece serves as an elegy, capturing both the sorrow of his passing and the elegance of his musical style.

Mingus Variations for solo piano was written over a period of months in 2024, one variation at a time, in no particular order, until I decided I was out of ideas I liked, tossed out a few, and arranged the remaining variations into the order shared in the final composition. The theme, which presents the tune’s original melody against a simple counterpoint, leads into five variations, each exploring a different aspect of the lush, dissonant harmonies and complex rhythms of the tune. The piece is dedicated to my student and friend Russel Brunton, who was my inspiration to begin composing in the first place, and also played an integral role in the development of this piece.

Piano score: 7 pages.

PDF Edition

Purchasing this item will give you access to download the music as a PDF. If you would prefer to purchase a hard copy, please click here.

About the Composer

Kim Davenport is a piano soloist and collaborative artist whose work is driven by a passion for sharing the works of underrepresented composers. Her primary focus over the past several years has been to perform and record solo and chamber works of Black composers. This work has resulted in multiple solo recitals, her 2022 album featuring Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s complete Twenty-Four Negro Melodies, Op.59, and her forthcoming 2025 studio albums with British bass clarinetist Sarah Watts and Canadian bass clarinetist Mélanie Bourassa.

In 2024, Kim had the honor of premiering the Piano Concerto, Op.14 by Kevin Oldham, a brilliant pianist/composer whose life was cut tragically short by AIDS in 1993, in a new transcription for piano and concert band with the Tacoma Concert Band, led by conductor Gerard Morris.

Kim is active in the vibrant musical community of Tacoma, Washington, where she maintains a private piano studio, teaches at both the University of Washington Tacoma and the University of Puget Sound, and performs regularly around the city. She is especially interested in drawing connections between her life as a performer and her 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,” was published in 2023.

She 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 establish a growing catalog of sheet music for the bass clarinet. In 2020, following her father’s passing, Kim reinvigorated the Alea catalog with a focus on underrepresented composers, and established the Dolphy Prize for new works for bass clarinet by black composers.

Kim holds undergraduate degrees in music and piano performance from the University of Washington, and a Master of Music in piano performance from Northwestern University.