Hot News for 2008

Occupying my time for the next few months will be a move from Spain to a small Greek island. Once there this site will resume normal business, but until then there's plenty left to read and listen to. Enjoy.

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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

An extraordinary jazz composer... whose works should be better known in the U.S.
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

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’.

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.

His 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.

Peppered throughout the site are links for emusic, iTunes, Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. Please use these links if you wish to download or buy any Graham Collier material. A small percentage of such sales comes back to this site.

Autumn News

The second BGO compilation of early Collier material, including a stereo version of Deep Dark Blue Centre, and a previously unissued version of Mosaics was released in September.
The Derby Jazz performance of From Acorns... featuring Harry Beckett (from which the rehearsal picture above was taken), is part of a covermount DVD on October’s Jazzwise magazine.
memories arrested in space, six compositions for saxophone quartet inspired by Jackson Pollock paintings from 1947, will be published by Advance Music in 2009.
the jazz composer, moving music off the paper, a philosophical look at the subject of jazz and jazz composition, is now being readied for publication in April 2009 by Northway Books.
directing 14 Jackson Pollocks, a new double CD will be released at the same time.

* 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).

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