The British composer, arranger and leader Graham
Collier has a new web site that should win awards for
design, thoroughness and easy navigation.
Doug
Ramsey’s Rifftides, October 10th,
2008
Britain’s
most original jazz talent
The
Financial Times
A
pioneer ... a true British jazz original
The
Times,
London
Howard Mandel, author of Miles, Ornette, Cecil, Jazz beyond Jazz
On the evidence of this performance, the services of Graham
Collier should be secured by just about every big band on
the planet.
John
Shand, The
Sydney Morning Herald
One
of the great iconoclasts and unique voices in jazz
composing-arranging.
Bill
Kirchner’s comment on a review in Doug Ramsey’s
blog Rifftides
The
subheading quote is from The Penguin Guide to Jazz on
CD
Above and elsewhere in this site are press comments
from Graham Collier’s 40 year career as a composer,
one who is regularly compared to
Gil Evans,
Charles Mingus,
and
Duke Ellington,
is listened to by pop groups such as
Babyshambles,
who continues to influence young jazz musicians around the
world, and who knows jazz has a past but needs a future. A
future he is helping to shape by his radical
approach.
Out Now: A new book
directing 14 Jackson Pollocks, a new double CD will be released at the beginning of June. Two full length extracts can be heard and downloaded by clicking on the title above.
Celebrate with two full length downloadable extracts
Recent Press: Penguin praise and kaleidoscopes
Hoarded Dreams and Workpoints are both in the top four star category which signifies ‘an outstanding record… a splendid example of the artist’s work.’ Four of the others – Deep Dark Blue Centre, Darius, New Conditions and Symphony of Scorpions – get three and a half stars signifying ‘an excellent record with some exceptional music’, while eight more, given three stars, ‘will reward the listener tuned to [their] merits’.
The opening seven
minutes of blistering improvisation [on The Alternate
Mosaics] are the closest to ‘free jazz’ in any
of Collier’s recordings … but the piano-bass
duet which follows is also some of the most delicate
music… And that’s Collier for you: a given
mood will only last until the next shake of the
kaleidoscope.
Clifford
Allen’s review of the second BGO compilation
in Paris
Transatlantic
Later this year
Gigs are being
discussed in Scandinavia and Italy for the autumn with
Austria and Australia on the horizon in 2010.
memories arrested in
space, six compositions for
saxophone quartet inspired by Jackson Pollock paintings
from 1947, will be published by Advance Music.
Darius,
Midnight Blue
and
New Conditions
will be released in
October, the third in BGO’s chronological
2CD compilations
of Graham Collier
recordings.
Graham Collier’s view is that the only healthy
way to look at jazz is as a continuum in a constant state
of interaction between its past and its future, and between
the traditions of the music and the creativity of its
artists. This is explored further on
jazzcontinuum.com,
the former Graham Collier site, which is now a blog plus
a collection of articles and recommendations, and
on
thejazzcomposer.com
a new site dedicated to discussing aspects of his new
book
the jazz composer, moving music off the
paper.
More than 20
samples of Graham Collier compositions, alongside the notes
used by the musicians to create them, can be found on the
various Recording pages. This 13 minute montage is drawn from
those recordings and will open in a new page, while you
continue to browse the site. They show his wide range as
a jazz composer, one who, like his idols Duke Ellington,
Charles Mingus and Gil Evans, is interested in
‘moving music off the
paper’.
The montage draws music from Portraits (1973), Deep Dark Blue Centre (1967), New Conditions (1976), Bread and Circuses (2003), Adams Marble (1995), Symphony of Scorpions (1977), Darius (1974), Something British Made in Hong Kong (1987), Midnight Blue (1975), Hoarded Dreams (recorded 1983, released 2007).