Jazz Articles about Graham Collier

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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 ...

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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 ...

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Graham Collier: Down Another Road / Songs For My Father / Mosaics

by Nic Jones
December 26, 2007

Graham Collier Down Another Road / Songs For My Father / Mosaics BGO Records 2007

The late 1960s and early 1970s were years when European jazz in general, and British jazz in particular, came into their own in terms of the music making a fundamental break with established, exclusively American precedents.

This two-disc reissue of three Graham Collier albums made by the bassist/bandleader during the period underscores this ...

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Graham Collier: Down Another Road / Songs For My Father / Mosaics

by John Kelman
December 11, 2007

These days, British bassist Graham Collier is often considered more as a composer/arranger/bandleader, especially with archival issues like Hoarded Dreams (Cuneiform, 2007) and Workpoints (Cuneiform, 2005) placing emphasis on large ensemble work (though one disc of Workpoints featured a sextet). It's easy to forget that, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, he released some of the finest small ensemble jazz to come out of the UK, most notably a string of three titles that, up until now, have been ...

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Graham Collier: Hoarded Dreams

by Jerry D'Souza
June 18, 2007

Great music stands the test of time. Composer/arranger/bandleader Graham Collier proves that once again with the release of Hoarded Dreams. The work was commissioned by the Arts Council of Great Britain for the ninth Bracknell Jazz Festival in July 1983.

Collier has sandwiched five extended parts between the introduction and the coda. They become the take-off and landing points of the suite.

His writing is secure in its art. He lets structure lay the foundation and then opens the doors ...

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Graham Collier: Forging Ahead

by Nic Jones
April 22, 2007

British bandleader and composer Graham Collier is seventy this year. In the course of his career he has, perhaps, unusually become more expansive in his musical outlook, fashioning pieces for ensembles larger than those he was working with during the late 1960s and early 1970s, a period which is effectively the high water mark of the documentation of his music on record.

One of the many characteristics of his work is a singularity of artistic vision, ...

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Graham Collier: Hoarded Dreams

by Nic Jones
March 7, 2007

Hindsight is arguably always a dubious benefit, but in this case it reveals that Hoarded Dreams just might be a touchstone for Graham Collier's music, more specifically the inventions for large ensembles that he's been fashioning for the last thirty-odd years.

This disc was recorded at the Bracknell Jazz Festival in England in 1983, and Collier was fortunate indeed in securing the services of a crack band for the realisation of his extended piece. What's perhaps most notable about the ...