Making Jazz Fun

3/26/2024 12AM

Sammy Miller (center) and The Congregation take inspiration from early jazz figures like Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Jimmie Lunceford and Roy Eldredge, who incorporated humor into their music and theatrics into their stage shows.

Sammy Miller and The Congregation are on a mission

 

By Scott Hall

 

Sammy Miller is a Grammy-nominated jazz drummer. He studied at Juilliard. He’s played the New York clubs where the “serious” players do battle with little regard for the listeners. But the academic, intellectual, esoteric side of jazz is not his scene.

 

Though it’s hard to sum up a musical act in words, it helps if they have a mission statement, and this one does: Sammy Miller and The Congregation are on a mission to put the generosity back into jazz and bring art back to the people. Indeed, their latest album is a two-volume live set titled Joyful Jazz at Lincoln Center.

 

“I always see (jazz) as a playful and inviting form,” Miller says. “I want to be a gateway drug for people to this music.”

 

You’ll find that gateway at the Center for the Performing Arts on April 19, when Miller brings his combo to the Palladium to play a free morning matinee for local students and an 8 p.m. evening show for everyone else.

 

Though his father and grandfather were born in Indianapolis, Miller grew up in Southern California, one of five children playing in a pop-rock family band that gigged around the area.

“That's what we did every day after school instead of sports,” he says. “We'd get together in our living room and play.”

 

His life took a turn at a young age when an older brother started bringing home records by the legends of bebop and post-bop jazz: Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Kenny Garrett, and so on. Miller “totally got hooked” and began visiting the local library to check out CDs in bulk.

 

“I didn't understand what was going on at all – I loved how it made me feel,” he says. “I just got every CD I could get, and I was like, ‘I'm gonna figure this out.’”

 

Halfway through high school, he transferred to the L.A. County High School for the Arts, where he reveled in being around other students who also were “jazzed about jazz.” After graduating, he enrolled at the New School in New York and later moved on to Juilliard.

 

As he built a professional career, Miller developed his own concept of what a band should be. The Congregation’s music is heavily influenced by Dixieland-style group improvisation, as well as the New Orleans tradition of letting the good times roll and making people dance. They take inspiration from early jazz figures like Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Jimmie Lunceford and Roy Eldredge, who incorporated humor into their music and theatrics into their stage shows. Miller has studied their live recordings and film clips.

 

“The music was just one part of it,” he says. “It was an experience, and it was powerful, and it was joyful and irreverent at times.”

 

Improvisation can extend well beyond the notes the musicians play, Miller argues. The same spontaneity can be applied to stage banter and other aspects of performance. The Congregation tries to mix it up every night.

 

“It's the same structure as a jazz song, where we have a theme and then there's variation,” he says. “I think the same thing should be true in between the songs. I'm going to talk about whatever's going on in my life, and then there's room for improvisation. The audience is a participant. It doesn't have to be funny, but it has to be authentic. It often ends up being funny, too.”

Another key aspect of the group’s mission is educating younger generations about the joys of jazz, through special performances like the local matinee and by other means. As the pandemic was shutting down the touring music business, Miller launched Playbook, an online platform that supplements the work of music teachers and band directors with instrument-specific instructional videos by a roster of professional musicians.

 

“As students are learning songs, each instrumentalist has a mentor who helps them understand how to approach that specific piece,” Miller says. “I was just interested in giving teachers the tools to teach music so their students play after they graduate high school, giving people the skills to be lifelong musicians.”

 

As with his band’s performances, the aim of Playbook is to emphasize the wonder and the pleasure of learning, playing and listening to jazz. If kids hear it, they get it, Miller says.

 

“You can't just say, ‘It's America's art form’ – you have to show them why they should care about it,” he says. “So I'm trying to show them, so that they can pay it forward and share the joy and comfort it brought me as a child. It's powerful, powerful, soul healing.”