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School News
Composition professor Joël-François Durand named acting director of School of Music
University of Washington Professor Joël-François Durand will serve as acting director of the School of Music through June 2024. The longtime Composition professor was named interim director of the School of Music in the wake of the unexpected death on Feb. 1 of former director JoAnn Taricani (see story, page 5). College of Arts and Sciences Dean Dianne Harris announced the appointment on February 2 in an internal email to School of Music faculty and staff. “The College leadership is committed to ensuring that the School of Music has strong unitlevel leadership during this time of transition,” Harris wrote. “We are pleased to announce that Professor Joël-François Durand has agreed to serve as interim director of the School of Music through the end of June 2022. We are grateful for his willingness to step into this role on short notice at a sorrowful and difficult time, and for his many years of experience serving as the School’s associate director.” Durand’s appointment was subsequently extended through June 2024. A member of the School of Music Composition faculty since 1991, Durand composes works for solo instruments and ensembles and has created numerous commissioned works for significant ensembles worldwide. Recent projects for Durand include a work for large orchestra, Tropes de : Bussy, based on some of Debussy’s piano Préludes, commissioned by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, which premiered the work in 2019. His composition Geister, schwebende Geister, for viola and ensemble (written for faculty violist Melia Watras in 2020) won first prize at the 2021 European Composer Competition organized by the Franz Schubert Konservatorium, Vienna, Austria, in the Category Chamber Music. It will be premiered in April 2023 in Seattle at the UW’s Meany Hall. Besides being a creator of large-scale music works, Durand is also an inventor of audio equipment. In 2010, he designed and started commercial production of a tonearm for record players called the Talea, followed by development of three further models, the Telos, the Kairos, and the Tosca, all aimed at consumers of high-end audio reproduction systems. For his work at his company Durand Tonearms LLC, he was made a University of Washington Entrepreneurial Fellow in 2010. As associate director of the School since 2002, Durand supervised the advising office and helped students resolve issues regarding grading or other academic issues. In one of his first acts as School of Music director, Durand appointed Jazz Studies Associate Professor Ted Poor to the associate director role.
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Composition Professor Joel-Francois Durand has been appointed Acting Director of the School of Music (Photo: Steve Korn) .
Associate Professor Ted Poor has been appointed Acting Associate Director of the School of Music (Photo: Piper Hanson) .
Jazz Studies faculty Ted Poor appointed associate director of School of Music
Associate Professor Ted Poor has been named acting associate director of the School of Music. He succeeds former associate director Joël-François Durand, who vacated the position in early February after 20 years in the role when he was named acting director of the School of Music (see story, above). In his new role, Poor works with the School’s advisors and students to address matters related to grades or other academic issues. A member of the UW faculty since 2013, Poor is a highly-regarded drummer whose work crosses numerous genres. A graduate of the Eastman School of Music, Poor made his mark in the jazz and indie-rock music communities of New York City appearing on dozens of recordings and sharing stages with world-renowned artists such as Bill Frisell, Pat Metheny, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Gabriel Kahane, My Brightest Diamond, Aaron Parks, and Ralph Alessi. He is a member of the band of Los Angeles based singer/song-writer Andrew Bird, among many other projects. At the School of Music, he is the faculty advisor for the annual Improvised Music Project Festival (IMPFest) co-presented by the School of Music and the student-run IMP, as well as a frequent collaborator with faculty colleagues across the UW’s performance and composition programs.
