Allison Miller: Rivers In Our Veins

A review of the latest from jazz drummer and composer Allison Miller

Allison Miller

Rivers In Our Veins

The Royal Potato Family

Across the last two decades, as both bandleader and hired hand, drummer and composer Allison Miller has been creating or contributing to intelligent jazz. She has even stepped out to play smart pop music in a support role (Natalie Merchant, Ani DiFranco, Brandi Carlile). But it’s the nine albums with her name on the spine that tell the real story of the depth of her playing, producing and compositional skills. And this, the latest, is an audacious, often breath-taking foray into the territory of, whisper it…The Concept Album!

Wait, come back! The clue is largely there in the title - Rivers In Our Viens. The Mid Atlantic Arts Organisation and Lake Placide Center for the Arts comissioned the New York-based musicians to create this 12-song cycle to commemorate (rather than to literally eulogise) the five East Coast rivers either currently, or at some stage, under the environmental threat of polution (HUdson, Susquehanna, James, Delaware and Potomac). This might not mean a whole lot to listeners outside and away from the area, but that is the point around drawing attention.

And, concept aside, this is just stunning music to take in.

Jason Palmer (trumpet), Carmen Staaf (piano), Jenny Schienman (violin), Todd Sickafoose (upright bass) and Ben Goldberg (clarinet) join Miller to make music that pushes and pulls, that takes jazz as its root but searches and flows over and around it, somewhere between the recent stirrings by Bill Frisell and the 80s/90s explorations by Max Roach. I’m sure Roach is a huge influence on Miller, his shadow looms large over modern jazz drumming, but more so for her regard to Roach’s own work as a percussionist outside the kit, as colourist of sound, composer and producer/arranger.

One great innovation is the inclusion of tap-dancers to a purely audio program - this is a brilliant use of the percussion inherent in their performance, and reminscent again of Roach’s M’Boom ensemble from the 70s through the 90s.

Miller’s own playing is sublime of course, but chief among her skills is restraint; the ability to sit right back as a leader, leaning in only when needed.

The violins are stirring (particularly on the filmic Hudson), the brass is evocative and occassionally (intentionally) abrasive (as on Shipyards) and the interplay between the musicians is constantly dazzling. The interlude-like quality of Water is perfect in its subtle, shimmering grace, with Carmen Staaf’s piano and Todd Sickafoose’s bass locked in a dance even before Schienman’s violin enters.

Elsewhere, things are lithe and lively on For The Fish, Miller’s exquisite brushwork laying a subtle framework for the tap dancers (Claudia Rahardjanoto, Michelle Dorrance, Byron Tittle, Orlando Hernandez and Elizabeth Burke); eventually Jason Palmer and Ben Goldberg’s horns join and we have a bit of New York meets New Orleans parade music.

There are so many pieces of a very fine cinematic quality too, such as Riaparian Love, with its dulcet piano and violin duet, and the closer, The Dancing Tide, which feels like a medley summary of all the sounds we’ve heard and loved across this dynamic, engaging and thoughtful album. A masterpiece, truly.