Jazz Articles about Graham Collier

Mosaics: The Life and Works of Graham Collier

by Duncan Heining
August 28, 2018

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 ...

Graham Collier: Luminosity

by Duncan Heining
November 14, 2014

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 ...

Graham Collier: The Day of the Dead

by Nic Jones
January 4, 2012

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 ...

Graham Collier: Darius / Midnight Blue / New Conditions

by Nic Jones
May 9, 2010

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 ...

The Jazz Composer: Moving Music Off The Paper

by Nic Jones
November 12, 2009

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 ...

Graham Collier: Directing 14 Jackson Pollocks

by Nic Jones
August 11, 2009

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 ...

Graham Collier: Deep Dark Blue Centre / Portraits / The Alternate Mosaics

by Nic Jones
October 1, 2008

Graham Collier Deep Dark Blue Centre / Portraits / The Alternate Mosaics BGO Records 2008

This is the second chapter in BGO's reissue program of bassist/bandleader Graham Collier's work from the late 1960s and early 1970s. It gives listeners a chance to catch up with some of the most potent British jazz from a period when the music was moving forward at a rate and without a mind for the ...