Bob Boilen

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In 1988, a determined Bob Boilen started showing up on NPR's doorstep every day, looking for a way to contribute his skills in music and broadcasting to the network. His persistence paid off, and within a few weeks he was hired, on a temporary basis, to work for All Things Considered. Less than a year later, Boilen was directing the show and continued to do so for the next 18 years.

Significant listener interest in the music being played on All Things Considered, along with his and NPR's vast music collections, gave Boilen the idea to start All Songs Considered. "It was obvious to me that listeners of NPR were also lovers of music, but what also became obvious by 1999 was that the web was going to be the place to discover new music and that we wanted to be the premiere site for music discovery." The show launched in 2000, with Boilen as its host.

Before coming to NPR, Boilen found many ways to share his passion for music. From 1982 to 1986 he worked for Baltimore's Impossible Theater, where he held many posts, including composer, technician, and recording engineer. Boilen became part of music history in 1983 with the Impossible Theater production Whiz Bang, a History of Sound. In it, Boilen became one of the first composers to use audio sampling — in this case, sounds from nature and the industrial revolution. He was interviewed about Whiz Bang by Susan Stamberg on All Things Considered.

In 1985, the Washington City Paper voted Boilen 'Performance Artist of the Year.' An electronic musician, he received a grant from the Washington D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities to work on electronic music and performance.

After Impossible Theater, Boilen worked as a producer for a television station in Washington, D.C. He produced several projects, including a music video show. In 1997, he started producing an online show called Science Live for the Discovery Channel. He also put out two albums with his psychedelic band, Tiny Desk Unit, during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Boilen still composes and performs music and posts it for free on his website BobBoilen.info. He performs contradance music and has a podcast of contradance music that he produces with his son Julian.

Boilen's first book, Your Song Changed My Life, was published in April 2016 by HarperCollins.

Algiers Unpacks Its Kaleidscopically Dense 'The Underside of Power' Track By Track

By Bob Boilen • 10 hours ago

Algiers new album The Underside Of Power is one of 2017's most ambitious and intense records. I love it — but sometimes I have to just have to hit pause. There's a fierceness both in subject and sound and source, including speeches from Fred Hampton of the Black Panthers, bold and dark lyrical imagery of death and rage, sounds of people weeping, drones, chimes and what at times feels like the entire history of rock, gospel and R&B wrapped into fifty-one minutes. There's a lot to unpack here.

First Watch: Manchester Orchestra 'The Alien'

By Bob Boilen • Jun 22, 2017

Ask any artist and they'll likely to tell you it's easier to write when life is dark than when it is going well. Such was the fortunate dilemma — that of happiness — of Manchester Orchestra songwriters Andy Hull and Robert McDowell.

First Watch: Jen Cloher, 'Forgot Myself'

By Bob Boilen • Jun 21, 2017

If Jen Cloher's music has the driving, wandering feel of Courtney Barnett, it's because their lives are inextricably intertwined. The two poets and singers are a married couple; they're co-founders of Melbourne's Milk! Records; and, in this new song from Jen Cloher, you can hear Barnett's guitar along with her bassist, Bones Sloane.

Guest DJ: Aldous Harding

By Bob Boilen • Jun 21, 2017

Penguin Cafe: Tiny Desk Concert

By Bob Boilen • Jun 16, 2017

The music of Penguin Cafe is like no other. Its origins date back to the early '70s, within fever dreams Simon Jeffes had that were brought on by food poisoning. In those dreams he imagined a dispassionate world "where everyone lived in big concrete blocks and spent their lives looking into screens. In one room, there was a couple making love lovelessly. In another there was a musician sat at a vast array of equipment, but with headphones on, so there was no actual music in the room." Eerily accurate.

Guest DJ: How The Band Phoenix Made A Joyful Record In Chaotic Times

By Bob Boilen • Jun 9, 2017

Sufjan Stevens, Nico Muhly And Bryce Dessner On Creating 'Planetarium'

By Bob Boilen • Jun 8, 2017

There's a stunning project by a handful of music's current big-thinkers: composer Nico Muhly, songwriter and singer Sufjan Stevens and guitarist-composer Bryce Dessner of The National. The trio, along with percussionist James McAlister, have created Planetarium, an existential song cycle that confronts both the heavens and the human condition in a marriage of hypnotic sound and song.