Graham Collier
Directing
14 Jackson Pollocks
‘A
player with an amazing ability to absorb a lot of the
modern and progressive influences of his jazz generation -
but all without succumbing to the same indulgences as them.
A fact which resulted in a razor-sharp style that forged
some of the freshest jazz ever to come out of the
UK.’
‘Far more radical than most of his generation’
The phrase
‘directing 14 Jackson Pollocks’ was used by an
artist friend of a friend to describe my approach to
performing, which, indeed, is my approach to jazz
composing.
‘He
appeared to stroll casually around the stage, giving
directions to these fantastic musicians by hand signals....
Quite how much he was controlling everything I’m not
sure, but individuals went into apparent freefall only to
be “rounded in” to the whole phenomena... It
was a complete texture of sound - massive sound... How the
hell does he write this? Or how much does he write and how
much is improvisation?’
The quotes above
serve as a reminder that although his generation included
such composers as the three Mikes, Westbrook, Garrick and
Gibbs, as well as Chris McGregor and John Surman, Graham
Collier’s radicalism and achievements were, and are,
often overlooked.
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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 jazz composer to receive a
commission from the Arts Council of Great Britain. 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 DownBeat
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 Harry Beckett, Mike Gibbs,
John Marshall, Stan Sulzmann, John Surman, Art Themen, and
Kenny Wheeler.
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.
Over a career spanning more than forty years he has
released 19 albums and CDs of his own, as well as being
part of compilations from such as Gilles Peterson,
Babyshambles, Jazztronik and Masanori Morita. He has
recorded with the Australian contemporary music group The
Collective, the Danish Radio Jazz Orchestra and the NDR Big
Band, and for ensembles ranging from saxophone quartet to
symphony orchestra.
He has worked in a wide range of other media: on stage
plays and musicals, on documentary and fiction film, and on
a variety of radio drama productions, including a highly
praised version of Josef Skvorecky's novella,
The Bass
Saxophone,
which won a Sony Radio Award, and an adaptation of Malcolm
Lowry's novel Under the
Volcano,
both for the BBC.
He is equally well-known as an author and educator, having
written seven books on jazz, jazz history, compositional
technique and education. Interaction, opening up the
jazz ensemble was published in 1995 to fulsome
praise in the jazz press. The latest book
the jazz
composer, moving music off the paper,
2009, Northway Books,
has also been highly praised.
In the early 1980s, he developed the six-year jazz degree
course at the Sibelius Institute in Helsinki, Finland and
in 1986 he launched the Royal Academy of Music’s jazz
course. The first graduates were awarded their degrees in
1989, and he remained artistic director until resigning in
1999. He has also taught seminars, lectures and workshops
throughout Europe, North America, Canada, Australia, New
Zealand and the Far East.
In 1989, he was among the group of international jazz
educators who formed the International Association of
Schools of Jazz and he was Secretary of the Daily Board for
nine years.
He was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by
Queen Elizabeth II in 1987. He left his full-time post as
artistic director of the jazz course at the Royal Academy
in 1999 to concentrate on composition. After eight years
living in Ronda, in the mountains of Andalucia, southern
Spain, in 2008 he moved with his long-time partner, author
John Gill, to a small Aegean island, where he continues to
compose, travelling from there to present concerts and
workshops around the world.
© Duncan
Heining
© Karlijne
Pietersma
© Enid Irving
Website
http://www.grahamcolliermusic.com