February 26, 2025
From the Hollywood Bowl to the classroom, UW professor blends roles as educator and professional musician
Ted Poor, associate director of the University of Washington School of Music and an associate professor of jazz studies, has previously collaborated with renowned artists such as Paul Simon, Marcus Mumford, Rufus Wainwright and more.Meredith Truax/Universal Music Group
Ted Poor doesn’t separate his work as a professional musician and his teaching responsibilities at the University of Washington.
At the UW, he’s the associate director of the School of Music and an associate professor of jazz studies. The rest of his calendar is filled with tours, performances and recording sessions. While the packed schedule can occasionally be difficult to navigate, Poor said his two worlds aren’t really disconnected.
“My work here at the UW and with students is very much informed by and integrated with my work as a professional musician,” he said. “I feel like I’m able to take all that I am learning out in the world, bring that to the students and hopefully shed some light on the process. Music is a lifelong pursuit. It’s never ending. In that sense, the students and I are no different from one another. We’re on a continuum.”
Poor has previously collaborated with renowned artists such as Paul Simon, Marcus Mumford, Rufus Wainwright and more. More recently, he went on a tour with the Andrew Bird Trio that took him from Europe to Chicago and culminated with two nights at the Hollywood Bowl. The trio — Bird, a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter, Poor on drums and bassist Alan Hampton — played a combination of the Great American Songbook, jazz standards and compositions by Bird.
Ted Poor recently went on a tour with the Andrew Bird Trio.Kenzi Everitt
“You get a really specific feel from the Hollywood Bowl space itself,” said Poor, who played the iconic Los Angeles amphitheater for the first time. “Just being on stage and hitting the snare drum before everything is amplified — even though it’s so massive, you feel connected to the space. It gives back to you on stage.”
Playing with the trio is one of Poor’s favorite activities. The musicians have been together for years, and that familiarity gives them space to make every performance unique.
“The music is reactive to that moment, that evening, that day,” Poor said. “We’re not just delivering renditions of Andrew’s songs. We’re finding music each night. Some nights the music might take on a slightly different shade, and other nights it could be radically different. There’s just this freedom and an invitation to allow your impulses to guide the way.”
In early 2024, the Andrew Bird Trio recorded and released “Sunday Morning Put On,” a take on American Songbook tunes. Poor saw the album as an opportunity for a group with so much history to focus on different material.
“There was this sort of trust that we could try some new things that weren’t obvious without the fear of somebody questioning if the band is working,” Poor said. “We know the band works. We know what we’re capable of. Because of that, we can investigate things that that might not be the safe choice.”
Outside of the Andrew Bird Trio, Poor has been spending time in Los Angeles working on an album of experimental pop songs with singer, songwriter and poet Shungudzo Kuyimba. The collaboration includes producer Mitchell Froom, who has worked with Paul McCartney and Los Lobos, among others, and David Boucher, whose credits include Disney/Pixar.
The record, co-written and co-produced by Poor and Kuyimba, is supported in part by the Floyd and Delores Jones Endowed Fund for the Arts and will be released this year. It’s based on Poor’s instrumental compositions to which Kuyimba later wrote and added vocals. They’ve since worked together on further writing, orchestration and production. The two were initially introduced by a mutual friend who knew Poor had instrumental music with no vocals and Kuyimba was looking to collaborate with a jazz musician.
“We had never met,” Poor said. “We talked a little over FaceTime and I sent her a whole slew of recordings I made. She parsed through them and found inspiration and created these incredible new dimensions. Suddenly my music had become our music. It’s been an amazing process. I’ve never collaborated in this fashion before.”
Additionally, Poor found time to play in live performances of Cunningham Bird — a studio album covering the 1970s album by Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, “Buckingham Nicks” — at the Bumbershoot and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festivals. Cunningham Bird is a collaboration between Bird and Grammy award-winning singer songwriter Madison Cunningham.
Poor also recorded a new drum set solo work for The Bell Choir Sessions, an in-studio concert series. The Los Angeles studio was opened by Tyler Chester, a friend of Poor’s and a Grammy-nominated producer, session musician, instrumentalist and composer.
“In addition to traditional recording sessions, Tyler’s been doing these recorded concert series,” Poor said. “I was part of one of those back in December where I played solo drums, and we recorded it. I’m trying to figure out what to do with it exactly. It’s an intimate room — like 100 people packed into a choir room with a number of artists present.”
Poor will keep the momentum going this summer. He’s currently rehearsing with one of his heroes, Grammy-winning jazz guitarist John Scofield, in preparation for a long tour in Europe this summer.
At the UW, he’s part of a project called the Provost’s Academy, a leadership development and innovation program for emerging leaders in the faculty. Poor’s been paired with Ed Taylor, UW dean of undergraduate affairs. While the year-long collaboration is in the early stages of development, in many ways, Poor’s vision mimics how he carries his professional experiences back to his students.
“We’re at a moment where I think we can figure out a way for the arts to engage with more students,” Poor said. “Not necessarily only teaching more students how to play instruments or be a dancer — even though that’s wonderful — but finding ways to get them into the mindset of an artist and help some broader student populations experience what it means to work in an artistic way, and provide balance to their studies in the sciences or business, etc. What if improvisation and creative discovery could be a part of every student’s time here at the UW, regardless of their area of study? I think that would be a good thing.”
For more information, contact Poor at tedpoor@uw.edu.
Tag(s): College of Arts & Sciences • School of Music • Ted Poor
