Graham Collier

about

Graham Collier OBE (born James Graham Collier in Tynemouth on 21 February 1937; died 9 September 2011) was an English jazz bassist, bandleader and composer. As well as recording under his name, he recorded as Graham Collier Sextet, Graham Collier Music, Graham Collier And The Collective, and The Graham Collier Septet. Collier began playing trumpet in northern England and later worked in bands for the British Army. In 1961 he received a scholarship to attend the Berklee College of Music and would be the first British student to graduate from the school. In 1963 he briefly toured with Jimmy Dorsey's Orchestra where he played bass. He is best remembered as a bandleader and was one since 1964. His first band was the Graham Collier Ensemble, which toured from the 1960s to the 1980s. In 1983 he started Hoarded Dreams, which was more consistently a big band. He also became a jazz educator at the Royal Academy of Music and worked in film composition. In 1987 he was awarded the Order of the British Empire for his services to jazz. Collier was the first British graduate of Berklee School of Jazz, Boston, and the first British jazz composer to receive a commission from the Arts Council. Composition, conducting, education and journalism have taken him around the world. A pioneer … a true British jazz original - The Times, London His new group, The Jazz Ensemble, includes - as with his previous groups - major names from Europe and the USA, many of them colleagues from earlier line-ups,

top songs

albums

Back to the Bus

Hoarded Dreams

British Conversations

Down Another Road

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Down Another Road/ Songs for My Father/ Mosaics

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Early Singles+

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The Third Colour

Impressed With Gilles Peterson

Deep Dark Blue Centre/ Portraits/ The Alternate Mosaics

Down Another Road @ Stockholm Jazz Days '69

Deep Dark Blue Centre

Hamburg 1968

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