Joel Durand

Joel Durand is Professor of Music and Associate Director of the UW School of Music at UW, where he has taught composition, analysis, and theory since 1991. Joel’s music has been commissioned and performed by many leading ensembles and orchestras in Europe, the US, Brazil, and South Korea. His work for orchestra, Athanor, was premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 2003 and was released on a CD (Mode Records) in 2004. Joel developed a high-end tonearm, the Talea, for demanding audiophiles and markets them through his start-up Durand-Tonearms LLC. The result of over 2000 hours of research and development, Joel’s tonearm was conceived, designed and realized by Joel, mostly in the machine shop of the UW Mechanical Engineering department, with resources and help from several departments including Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, the School of Music, the School of Art, the Business School and the School of Law, as well as the Center for Commercialization.