Allison Miller’s Boom Tic Boom

Please join us for the Philadelphia premiere of In Our Veins: Rivers and Social Change, the new multimedia work by drummer and composer Allison Miller, teaming her singular ensemble Boom Tic Boom with acclaimed tap dancer Claudia Rahardjanoto.

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. 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, and her composition “Otis Was a Polar Bear” was on NPR’s list of “The 200 Greatest Songs by 21st Century Women.”

“Boom Tic Boom has a razor-sharp precision that recalls classic drummer-led ensembles of 50 years ago—the music of Art Blakey, Art Taylor and Max Roach come to mind—but Ms. Miller’s band works from a diverse sonic palette that is unmistakably contemporary.”
—The Wall Street Journal

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 historical reimagining of social movements and rivers through music, dance, and video. In Our Veins centers around five American rivers—the Susquehanna, Delaware, James, Hudson, and Schuylkill—and particular narratives associated with each. The project explores multimedia performance as a vital form of knowledge production through the poetic interpretation of historical events and their association with the geography, ecology, and flow of specific rivers, presenting a rich multi-sensual experience for the audience. Music, movement, and images coalesce to produce transformational impressions, visions, and ideas.