Allison Miller and Brinae Ali
NYC-based drummer/teacher/composer Allison Miller engages her deep roots in improvisation as a vehicle to
explore all music. Described by Paste magazine as a “Modern Jazz Icon in the Making,” Miller has released 17
albums as a leader/co-leader and has collaborated with artists such as Derrick Hodge, Dr. Lonnie Smith,
Brandi Carlile, Late Night with Seth Meyers, Natalie Merchant, and Ani DiFranco. Her most recent release, Big & Lovely, features Miller and her compositions played by the grammy nominated One O'Clock Lab Band. Miller's penultimate release, Rivers In Our Veins, has received critical acclaim, winning Chamber Music America’s Interdisciplinary
Collaboration of the Year Award, NPR’s 50 Best Albums of 2023, and NPR’s 10 Best Jazz Albums of 2023. Miller is also a founding member of Blue Note recording supergroup Artemis. She teaches at Peabody Institute, New School for Jazz, and is the Artistic Director of Jazz Camp West. Miller endorses Yamaha, Zildjian, Vic Firth, and Evans.
Tap Dance is Percussion
Session Description:
World renowned tap dancer Brinae Ali, and drummer Allison Miller, demonstrate the vitality of tap dance throughout jazz history. From the early 1900s to today, tap dance and drumming share a rhythmic language that percussively inspires and supports one another.
Through historical context and performance, Ali and Miller shows how tap and drumming share this common language, communicating through syncopated rhythms of the African diaspora and improvisation. During the first half of the 20th century, jazz and tap were connected. Big bands routinely toured with tap dancers and they were considered musicians AND dancers – an interdisciplinary art form – integrating two ideas at once. Just before mid-century the two art forms began to veir apart. Why is this? Ali and Miller explain what happened and how the art forms are now coming back together with vitality and freshness, embracing contemporary culture while co-existing with the historical tradition of both.
Session Category:
- Drumset
Date:
Saturday, November 15, 2025
Time:
12:00 PM
Location:
Room 101
Session Type:
Clinic / Performance
Session Format:
Live
