Allison Miller Boom Tic Boom at Caplan Center for the Performing Arts

Over the past ten years, Allison Miller’s Boom Tic Boom has established itself as one of the most consistently inventive and hardest working bands in modern jazz. Fronted by the extraordinary drummer and composer, the eclectic ensemble features violinist Jenny Scheinman, cornetist Kirk Knuffke, clarinetist Ben Goldberg, bassist Todd Sickafoose and pianist Myra Melford. Miller’s music for the sextet makes surprising and inventive use of the full palette of its unique instrumentation, simultaneously challenging and infectious, witty and emotional, joyous and richly layered, drawing on a range of inspirations embracing modern jazz, indie rock, and globe-spanning rhythmic traditions. Miller has been named one of the “Top 20 Jazz Drummers” in Downbeat Magazine and her composition, “Otis Was a Polar Bear,” was on NPR’s list of “The 200 Greatest Songs by 21st Century Women.”...

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Over the past ten years, Allison Miller’s Boom Tic Boom has established itself as one of the most consistently inventive and hardest working bands in modern jazz. Fronted by the extraordinary drummer and composer, the eclectic ensemble features violinist Jenny Scheinman, cornetist Kirk Knuffke, clarinetist Ben Goldberg, bassist Todd Sickafoose and pianist Myra Melford. Miller’s music for the sextet makes surprising and inventive use of the full palette of its unique instrumentation, simultaneously challenging and infectious, witty and emotional, joyous and richly layered, drawing on a range of inspirations embracing modern jazz, indie rock, and globe-spanning rhythmic traditions. Miller has been named one of the “Top 20 Jazz Drummers” in Downbeat Magazine and her composition, “Otis Was a Polar Bear,” was on NPR’s list of “The 200 Greatest Songs by 21st Century Women.”

This performance will add tap dancer Claudia Rahardjanoto to the band for the Philadelphia premiere of Miller’s new work, In Our Veins: Rivers and Social Change, a multimedia suite centered around five American rivers and the social and environmental changes they inspired: the Susquehanna, the Delaware, the James, the Hudson, and the Schuylkill. Rivers are the lifeline of America, according to Miller, whose ambitious new work explores the social movements that took place around waterways in the 19th and 20th century.

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