Accessibility links
Allison Miller Allison Miller artist page: interviews, features and/or performances archived at NPR Music

Allison Miller

How To Like Jazz, For The Uninitiated

Jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie performs at the Boston Globe Jazz and Blues Festival on Jan. 15, 1966. Bob Daugherty/AP hide caption

toggle caption
Bob Daugherty/AP

Music

How To Like Jazz, For The Uninitiated

Want to start the new year with some new music? Weekend Edition has you covered with a new genre every week this month.

How To Like Jazz, For The Uninitiated

Listen · 6:03
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/793722676/793722677" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript
More Than Keeping Time: A Melodic Drumming Demo

Drummer, Allison Miller Colin Marshall/NPR hide caption

toggle caption
Colin Marshall/NPR

Jazz Night In America: Video Episodes And Shorts

More Than Keeping Time: A Melodic Drumming Demo

WBGO and Jazz At Lincoln Center

Drummers usually make sure beats don't speed up or slow down. But drummer Allison Miller does more than keep time. Watch a demonstration of her unique style of playing called melodic drumming.

More Than Keeping Time: A Melodic Drumming Demo

  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/639233311/639346419" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
Allison Miller's Boom Tic Boom On JazzSet

Allison Miller leads Boom Tic Boom at the Kennedy Center during the Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival. Margot Schulman/Courtesy of the Kennedy Center hide caption

toggle caption
Margot Schulman/Courtesy of the Kennedy Center

JazzSet with Dee Dee Bridgewater

Allison Miller's Boom Tic Boom On JazzSet

WBGO

This is the set by Allison Miller and her Boom Tic Boom project that became the hit of the 2012 Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival. Players pair off and rejoin, chase one another and catch up.

Allison Miller's Boom Tic Boom On JazzSet

  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/155923412/178803326" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
Allison Miller's Boom Tic Boom: Tiny Desk Concert
Emily Bogle/NPR

Tiny Desk

Allison Miller's Boom Tic Boom: Tiny Desk Concert

The drummer is an awfully busy player — as likely to improvise with jazz musicians as she is to back Brandi Carlile — but in recent years, she's carved out time to write music for her own group. A few tunes are dedicated to friends like her first teacher, a "sometimes great guy."

Allison Miller's Boom Tic Boom: Tiny Desk Concert

Listen · 17:50
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/154296746/154452268" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
Browse archive or search npr.org