Throughout my journey as a musician and educator, I’ve had many sources of inspiration. I’ve been lucky enough to meet many of them. However, there have always been moments where I wished I could find out more; find out what kept them going, and why they did what they did.

For this reason, Sammy and I decided to create the Playin’ Around With Playbook IGTV Series, in which we interview educators, performers, and artists on their life experiences and knowledge. Sammy and I decided to connect the Playbook community to their mentors.

To start us off, we decided to interview the man himself, CEO and Founder of Playbook: Sammy Miller. A native of Los Angeles, Juilliard trained-Grammy® nominated drummer Sammy Miller has been hailed as “the perfect player scholar” (The Wall Street Journal). He has spent the last decade touring with his joyful-jazz band, The Congregation, working with over 60,000 students in 350 schools. Miller has developed and consulted to build music curriculum for institutions including Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Whitney Museum, Los Angeles Unified School District, JazzED (Seattle), FirstWorks (Rhode Island), and The Juilliard School.

After a decade of innovative work, Miller founded PLAYBOOK to bring conservatory music education into K-12 schools. He currently lives in New York City, where PLAYBOOK is headquartered.

Trista Ford