RIP Graham Collier

[Alyn_Shipton]

Composer, bandleader, educator and sometime bassist Graham Collier died on Friday night (not Saturday as reported by some other online sites) while on holiday in Crete. We will be repeating the Jazz Library that he and I recorded together on 1 October as a tribute. I've had some good arguments with Graham over the years, but I shall miss him, and having done the notes to several of his BGO issues I came to realise just how excellent his work in the 60s and 70s was.

[grippie]

sad news, what a generation of jazz he had lived and played through.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

[astrogarage]

sad news. we were in occasional correspondence and he seemed like a really sweet bloke. his writing was a wee bit too polite for my tastes (or at least the more recent stuff i heard was) but that's just me - preferred hearing him play the bass. :(

[eighthobstruction]

Oh what a shame....GREAT music....GREAT ensembles....GREAT sound....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9bOPn-s_Ek

[Serial_Apologist]

A copy of "Mosaics - The Life and Works of Graham Collier" (Equinox) - a new book by Duncan Heining (price £18 incl postage) - has just this morning dropped through my letterbox. From a brief perusal it appears that Duncan has done his usual thorough researching of a subject, and the book is over 300 pages long, including Index.

[eighthobstruction]

....oh dear RIP

[Serial_Apologist]

I finished Duncan Heining's Collier biography the other day - a good read if a tad wordy: Heining goes for a somewhat academic style, here concentrating on his subject's compositional methodologies, contrasting Graham's with his contemporaries and predecessors. He foregrounds singularities and self-justifications rather than making stylistic observations, stressing the inherent difficuties Collier placed on combining improvisatory freedom with strong formal structures, with Harry Beckett singled as exemplary for these objectives. There's good detailed analysis of recordings. He goes into personal as well as musical strengths and weaknesses, as perceived by other writers as well as himself.

I had not expected much youtube of Collier, if any, and was therefore thrilled to find this footage of the band performing "Aberdeen Angus" in Paris in 1969, with the great Stanley Cowell on the piano. The latter takes a remarkable, original solo towards the end of the performance, which also captures a young but already powerful John Marshall.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw5b-Iowy7E

[Jazzrook]

I finished Duncan Heining's Collier biography the other day - a good read if a tad wordy: Heining goes for a somewhat academic style, here concentrating on his subject's compositional methodologies, contrasting Graham's with his contemporaries and predecessors. He foregrounds singularities and self-justifications rather than making stylistic observations, stressing the inherent difficuties Collier placed on combining improvisatory freedom with strong formal structures, with Harry Beckett singled as exemplary for these objectives. There's good detailed analysis of recordings. He goes into personal as well as musical strengths and weaknesses, as perceived by other writers as well as himself.

I had not expected much youtube of Collier, if any, and was therefore thrilled to find this footage of the band performing "Aberdeen Angus" in Paris in 1969, with the great Stanley Cowell on the piano. The latter takes a remarkable, original solo towards the end of the performance, which also captures a young but already powerful John Marshall.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw5b-Iowy7E

Wonderful footage of the Graham Collier Sextet which prompted me to order 'Down Another Road/Songs For My Father/Mosaics' - a 2-CD set on BGO.
Here's a fascinating interview with Graham by Clifford Allen in 2011:

https://www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine/interviews/collier.html

JR