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Graham Collier

Graham Collier's career spans four decades of innovation at the forefront of British jazz. He was the first British graduate of the Berklee School of Jazz, Boston, and the first British jazz composer to receive a commission from the Arts Council. During this time composition, conducting, education and journalism have taken him around the world.

He was born in Tynemouth, England, in 1937. On leaving school he joined the British Army as a musician, spending three years in Hong Kong. He subsequently won a down beat magazine scholarship to the Berklee School of Music in Boston, studying with Herb Pomeroy and becoming its first British graduate in 1963.

Returning to Britain, he formed the first of many line-ups known as Graham Collier Music, dedicated to performing his own compositions. One critic called his bands a ‘nursery for British jazz talent’, and over the years his line-ups have featured almost every British jazz musician of note, among them James Allsopp, Ian Ballamy, Harry Beckett, Chris Biscoe, Geoff Castle, Andy Cleyndert, Roger Dean, Mike Gibbs, Mick Hutton, Pete Hurt, Karl Jenkins, Mark Lockheart, Henry Lowther, John Marshall, Oren Marshall, Dick Pearce, Alan Skidmore, Ed Speight, Stan Sulzmann, John Surman, Art Themen, Derek Wadsworth, Alan Wakeman, Steve Waterman, and Kenny Wheeler.

In 1984, he formed a workshop big band, Loose Tubes, inspired by his concern that young musicians in England weren't getting efficient big band exposure. This multifaceted orchestra was to produce such talents as Julian Arguelles, Django Bates and Eddie Parker.

The international bands Collier has assembled for various special projects around the world have boasted the likes of Johanni Aaltonen, Ted Curson, Hugh Fraser, Palle Mikkelborg, Karlheinz Miklin, Terje Rypdal, Ed Sarath, Manfred Schoof, Harry Sokal, Tomasz Stanko and Eje Thelin.

He has written for ensembles ranging from wind quartets to symphony orchestras and big bands such as the Danish Radio Jazz Orchestra and the NDR Big Band. Over a career spanning more than forty years, his list of compositions and commissions has grown to encompass ensembles and arts bodies around the world.

He has released 18 albums and CDs of his own, as well as being part of compilations from such as Gilles Peterson, Babyshambles and Masanori Morita. He has also contributed to recordings by artists ranging from Ted Curson to Tom Robinson. For a full list and details see Recordings.

His latest group is the ad hoc big band The Jazz Ensemble - the italics stress an improvising factor Collier feels has been mislaid by certain superstars and didacts in the field - featuring a roster of regular collaborators, guests from Europe and America, and up-and-coming stars of the European jazz scene. The Jazz Ensemble has recorded two critically acclaimed CDs, Charles River Fragments and The Third Colour.

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Album Review

Graham Collier: Down Another Road @ Stockholm Jazz Days ’69

Read "Down Another Road @ Stockholm Jazz Days ’69" reviewed by Chris May


In 1969, when the composer and bassist Graham Collier took his sextet to Stockholm Jazz Days to give a live performance of their album Down Another Road (Fontana, 1969), the presence of a British band onstage at a European jazz festival was exceptional. The idea that British musicians would one day have their names on the marquee at US festivals, as Sons of Kemet, The Comet Is Coming and Nubya Garcia have in the 2020s, would have been regarded as ...

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Book Excerpts

Mosaics: The Life and Works of Graham Collier

Read "Mosaics: The Life and Works of Graham Collier" reviewed by Duncan Heining


The following is an excerpt is from “Chapter 9: The Eighties or Graham Collier -The Wilderness Years" of Mosaics: The Life and Works of Graham Collier by Duncan Heining (Equinox Publishing, 2018). All Rights Reserved. The late Graham Collier was a bandleader, a composer and a jazz educator. As far as this latter role was concerned he was arguably one of the most significant figures in jazz education, a point supported by the many awards he received ...

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Extended Analysis

Graham Collier: Luminosity

Read "Graham Collier: Luminosity" reviewed by Duncan Heining


A new work, posthumously released and recorded--how many of those can there have been in jazz? Luminosity features two late works by composer Graham Collier brought to realisation through the efforts of his partner, author John Gill and conductor Geoff Warren. To say this record is a fine valediction is a statement infused with regret. These two compositions reveal just how much music Collier still had to offer. Fortunately, Gill and Warren were able to bring together a ...

101
Album Review

Graham Collier: The Day of the Dead

Read "The Day of the Dead" reviewed by Nic Jones


Graham Collier's death, in 2011, lends this release a sad air--at least until the gravity of the music is considered, because truly the composer/arranger has gained some measure of immortality through it. Recorded over the years 1976 to 1978, the albums collected here mark a period of transition from Collier the bassist and small band leader to Collier the composer for large ensembles who grasped the implications of the tonal palette such groups could offer. In his ...

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Extended Analysis

Graham Collier: Darius / Midnight Blue / New Conditions

Read "Graham Collier: Darius / Midnight Blue / New Conditions" reviewed by Nic Jones


Graham Collier Music Darius / Midnight Blue / New Conditions BGO 2009

The benefit of hindsight reveals how the three LPs, recorded in the mid-1970s, collected here form the bridge between British bassist, composer and bandleader Graham Collier's early small group work and the expansion of tonal palette and compositional ambition that have marked his more recent forays. His music thus amounts to one of those occasions when increasing ambition is complimented by increasing ...

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Book Review

The Jazz Composer: Moving Music Off The Paper

Read "The Jazz Composer: Moving Music Off The Paper" reviewed by Nic Jones


The Jazz Composer: Moving Music Off The Paper Graham Collier Hardcover; 314 pages ISBN: 978 09557888 0 2 Northway Books 2009

Bassist, composer and bandleader Graham Collier's preoccupation with form is itself, in a very literal sense, a central concern of this book: with the passage of time, Collier's music has grown ever more structurally sophisticated. Such is its depth in 2009 that it is hardly surprising that The Jazz Composer: Moving Music ...

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Extended Analysis

Graham Collier: Directing 14 Jackson Pollocks

Read "Graham Collier: Directing 14 Jackson Pollocks" reviewed by Nic Jones


Graham Collier Directing 14 Jackson Pollocks Jazz Continuum 2009

Reissues can have a telescoping effect on our perception of an artist because they focus on music from the past, which in British bandleader and composer Graham Collier's case can be anything up to 40 or so years old. In the intervening decades his role as a composer has changed fundamentally, as has his place within a band. As a composer/director he now occupies a ...

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Book / Magazine

Mosaics: The Life and Works of Graham Collier by Duncan Heining from Equinox Publishing

Mosaics: The Life and Works of Graham Collier by Duncan Heining from Equinox Publishing

Source: All About Jazz

Mosaics is the first biography of bassist, band-leader, composer, educator and author Graham Collier. Duncan Heining draws extensively on Collier’s personal archive, as well as on interviews with fellow musicians, ex-students and colleagues from the Royal Academy of Music. It locates Collier and his work within the social and cultural changes which occurred during his life and, particularly, in relation to developments in British and European jazz of the 1960s and '70s. Collier’s work as a composer-bandleader represented an attempt ...

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Obituary

Graham Collier, 1937-2011

Graham Collier, 1937-2011

Source: All About Jazz

Written by Duncan Heining Composer, bassist and bandleader Graham Collier left town on Friday, September 9,, 2011. He was holidaying with his partner, John, in Crete, when a sudden heart failure took his final breath. It was quick, relatively painless but unexpected. We all felt sure Graham had too much sparkle, too much music in him to go so soon. His career, indeed his life, was shaped by music. Collier grew up in Luton, Bedfordshire—reason enough to leave home at ...

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Obituary

Graham Collier, 1937-2011

Graham Collier, 1937-2011

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey

raham Collier died last night at home in Greece. A British composer, author and bandleader on the forward edge of modern music, Collier was 74. Early reports are that he succumbed suddenly to a massive heart attack or stroke. From the announcement by Birmingham Jazz: Graham Collier had a major influence on British jazz, being one of the first contemporary jazz composers to write extended works for a large ensemble, and one of the first jazz people to receive commissions ...

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Event

The Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University presents: The jazz composer, moving music off the paper

The Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University presents: The jazz composer, moving music off the paper

Source: Yulanda Denoon

A book reading and signing with Graham Collier “Jazz happens in real time, once."  This mantra has provided the inspiration for my music and my beliefs about jazz, which are at the core of  the jazz composer. The work of the three icons of jazz composition—Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus and Gil Evans—is dealt with at length, alongside the question of why what their music can offer jazz composers has not been more widely taken up—particularly their philosophies, their openness, and ...

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Book / Magazine

Early Reviews of 'The Jazz Composer, Moving Music off the Paper'

Early Reviews of 'The Jazz Composer, Moving Music off the Paper'

Source: All About Jazz

Early reviews of the jazz composer, moving music off the paper

His commentaries give you new listening experiences and understanding, mindstorm of a book. Chris Searle, The Morning Star

This evaluation of the art is accessible to any layman with ears. Contradicting conventional wisdom about some composers … he backs his positions with evidence and references and makes readers think hard about what they listen to. This is an important book. Doug Ramsey, Rifftides ...

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Recording

What's New: Bill Evans (Box), Christian McBride (CD), Kristin Korb (CD), Philip Dizack (DVD), Graham Collier (Book)

What's New: Bill Evans (Box), Christian McBride (CD), Kristin Korb (CD), Philip Dizack (DVD), Graham Collier (Book)

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey

Bill Evans, Turn Out The Stars: The Final Village Vanguard Recordings (Nonesuch). This six-CD box set has kicked up a fuss lately on several blogs and web sites. The great pianist was dying when he recorded it. That knowledge informs the way critics hear the music he made with his trio at the Vanguard in June, 1980. Their arguments about artistic assent or decline are fascinating. But the music is what matters, and the music is magnificent. This would be ...

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Book / Magazine

Graham Collier: A New Book and a New Double CD

Graham Collier: A New Book and a New Double CD

Source: All About Jazz

With The Jazz Composer, Moving Music Off The Paper, veteran British jazz composer Graham Collier takes a philosophical look at the subject of jazz and jazz composition--published by Northway Books. Graham Collier's radical new analysis of the place of the composer in jazz is nothing less than a complete reassessment of the direction in which the music is developing and a powerful argument for fresh thinking. He focuses on Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus and Gil Evans, among many other composers, ...

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Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Graham Collier

Jazz Musician of the Day: Graham Collier

Source: Michael Ricci


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Technology

Graham Collier on the Web

Graham Collier on the Web

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey

The British composer, arranger and leader Graham Collier has a new web site that should win awards for design, thoroughness and easy navigation. The home page contains a link to a thirteen-minute montage of music from nine of Collier's eighteen albums over forty years. The montage is designed to be played while the visitor roams the site. It is a clever teaser, making the roamer want to hear more of Collier's daring writing played by superb musicians, among them trumpeters ...

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Recording

Graham Collier: The Alternate Mosaics

Graham Collier: The Alternate Mosaics

Source: All About Jazz

A previously unreleased version of “Mosaics," Graham Collier's highly acclaimed composition from 1969 will be released on September 2nd, as part of a second compilation of Graham's early music on BGO. Also on the double CD will be a previously unknown stereo version of Deep Dark Blue Centre, his first record, and Portraits. The “Alternate Mosaics" was recorded live, on the same night as the original, in The Torrington, North Finchley, London, then a famous jazz pub, now apparently a ...

Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Down Another Road @...

My Only Desire Records
2023

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Graham Collier:...

Jazzcontinuum
2014

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"Relook": Graham...

Cuneiform Records
2012

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Relook

Mosquitojazz Records
2012

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The Day of the Dead

BGO Records
2011

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Graham Collier:...

Unknown label
2010

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