About the Music

The composer shares this program note about her piece Who Knows? for piano four hands (2026):

Who Knows? was composed for my 2026 album Myriad Voices, as an opportunity to perform alongside pianist and composer Joe Williams, whose artistry has been a vital source of inspiration in my own development as a performer, recording artist, and composer.

The piece is based on a 1984 jazz tune of the same name written by my father, Michael Davenport. His musical language as a composer and improviser was profoundly formative to my own, functioning quite literally as the soundtrack to my musical childhood. Of all his tunes, Who Knows? has long fascinated me for its unusual chord choices and its angular two-part melody; its AABA form ensures that the primary musical ideas return again and again, but the tune's inherent dissonance challenges a true sense of resolution.

I approached the piece as a written-out improvisation on its underlying materials. The four-hand setting allowed me to explore layers of independent rhythmic activity, with each pianist often inhabiting a different rhythmic world before converging at moments of arrival and resolution. The resulting work transforms the original tune into a contemporary four-hand fantasy, combining jazz-influenced harmony with shifting polyrhythms and moments of lyrical reflection.

In this way, Who Knows? reflects both the improvisatory spirit of jazz and the collaborative nature of ensemble performance, while serving as a personal tribute to one of the most enduring influences on my musical life.

While rhythmically and harmonically complex, Who Knows? is not intended as a virtuosic showpiece. The primary challenges lie in ensemble coordination, rhythmic independence, and the balancing of multiple musical layers.

Duration: ca 4 minutes. Duo score: 7 pages.

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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.