Graham Collier, 1937 – 2011

Portrait of the artist in Papa Hemingway mode, relaxing on a pier in the middle of a mangrove swamp on the mighty rio Guayaquil, Ecuador, Christmas 2009, after a week sailing around the Galápagos islands

Late news (29/10/2011): Commemorative concert in Italy

Graham’s friend, the composer and bandleader Roberto Bonati, has added a ‘homage’ to Graham as a last-minute change to the programme of this year’s ParmaJazz Frontiere Festival in November. A youth jazz orchestra will be performing an ‘Omaggio a Graham Collier’, a programme of recent works that Graham performed with them in Parma in 2009, at the Casa della Musica, housed in the historic 15th century Palazzo Cusani, on the evening of Sunday November 27. You can see the full programme of the 2011 ParmaJazz Frontiere Festival, which includes concerts by the likes of the Roberto Bonati Trio, Arve Henriksen, Bobo Stenson, John Surman and others, here

Jazz composer Graham Collier, born James Graham Collier in Tynemouth, northern England, on 21 February 1937, named James after a grandfather but known throughout his life as Graham because his mother feared the prospect of people abbreviating him to “Jimmy”, died suddenly on Friday 9 September 2011, of heart failure in the general hospital of Hania, on Crete, where we were on holiday.

As his life partner of 35 years, I can at least say that it was very quick, he was unconscious and in no pain, and I was with him. If some external agency had told me I had to choose a way for him to go, I would choose something like that.

I have been overwhelmed but also buoyed by the messages of affection for Graham that started arriving mere hours after he died. The idea for this impromptu re-arrangement of Graham’s web site is to post an informal note of his death, and to begin collating the many tributes to him that are still appearing.

The cliché that “the music lives on” gains some validity from the fact that two of Graham’s earlier albums, Symphony of Scorpions (1977) and The Day of the Dead (1978), are being re-released in remastered form as a double CD by BGO Records in October. (Graham would have laughed out loud at the gruesome coincidence of the latter title and fickle fate.) A concert Graham gave in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in February 2011 with an ensemble led by the Canadian bandleader, composer and saxophonist Paul Cram was recorded and there are plans to release it next year as a CD and possibly DVD on Undercurrents Recordings, a new label launched by the Upstream Music Association in Halifax, where Paul is Artistic Director.

harbours seen for the first time...*

A small but pleasingly international group of Graham’s friends – from Australia, England, Greece, Holland, Ireland and the USA – buried him in a short secular ceremony at the lovely churchyard above Skopelos town at noon on Monday 26 September. We planted two lavender bushes on the grave, preparatory to arranging something fitting and more permanent in the near future. The sun shone, the churchyard has views of the surrounding mountains, and we clinked a glass, or coffee cup, on the paralia, seafront, afterwards. His grave is near the top above, and may acquire a miniature homage to Ryoanji, the Zen garden he found so inspirational, shortly.
*[this line, from ’Ithaka’, by Cavafy, one of Graham’s favourite poets, may also make it on to the plaque.]

I am posting links to the published obituaries below, and will be adding more as they appear. There are also plans for an online festschrift, to be published as an article in the magazine of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Artists, compiled by the composer and multi-instrumentalist Issie Barratt from comments by Graham’s friends and colleagues, which she and I hope to reproduce here.

The writer and critic Duncan Heining had already agreed to Graham’s request that he take on the heroic task of musical executor, and will be assembling an archive of his scores and other materials for which we hope we might find a home in some accessible academic setting. Duncan has also written a book on the history of British jazz in which Graham will feature.

With the help of Graham’s friends and executors, I hope to keep his 19 albums and those of his six books still in print available for the foreseeable future, and will, after some maintenance hiccups, be maintaining the online sales of his works.

I would like to use Graham’s web site to thank all those friends of his and ours whose kind words about Graham have been a great comfort since his death. I also need to apologise to those I have so far been unable to contact, a job that was delayed by the fact that I had to remain on Crete to deal with official paperwork and was only able to return to our home on Skopelos three days ago. I can say, however, that I was tremendously heartened by the sympathy and kindness I met at every turn on Crete, which was equalled by the sympathy and kindness of our friends, Greek and otherwise, here on Skopelos. Proof that the Greek quality of filoxenia, friendliness to strangers, endures.

As an amusement for our new, small, friend, John Morton, whose father Brian’s emails kept me sane while on Crete and later, I am including below this little-seen curio from the Collier-Gill archive. It is of us, one rainy afternoon on the island of Santa Cruz, with a Galápagos tortoise. At first, John thought that “the tortoise men” were either disturbingly small human beings, or that their “pet” was perhaps disturbingly large. (And these tortoises are indeed disturbingly large; in their annual circle between feeding and mating grounds, they manage to move no more than a few hundred yards, although at that speed everything probably looks brand new by the time they amble past again.)

If it was our “pet”, I would have suggested we call it “Sweetpea”. Alas, it wasn’t, but don’t tell John that.

The “tortoise men” with “Sweetpea”, the pet that got away – very slowly…

[late edit: this image has now gone mildly viral on the net, provoking some mirth about which figures in the above image are “normal” sized. John’s sister Alice “inclines” to the theory that the tortoise is “normal” sized, which must make the tortoise men at least, ooh, 18 inches high...]

Obituaries & appreciations

A recent but very welcome addition to the continuing tributes to Graham came in October, with the publication of his friend Claudio Bonomi’s article, “Graham Collier, compositore di mosaici”, in the Italian jazz magazine, All About Jazz, which you can read, in Italian, here

The very first obituary appeared in The Times on Tuesday 13 September, unsigned in the paper’s tradition of running anonymous obituaries, but written, as he has allowed me permission to “suggest” that he wrote it, by Alyn Shipton. The Times operates an online “paywall”, but you can read Alyn’s excellent appreciation in the “Times obituary” link in the menu at the top of this page, or at the Times web site here

The Guardian followed a few days later with an obituary by John Fordham, which can be read here

The Independent published Brian Morton’s magnificent consideration of Graham’s life and work on Monday 19 September, and you can read it here

The Spanish jazz magazine, Cuadernos de Jazz, in my opinion the finest jazz magazine in the world, ran a splendid appreciation of Graham’s work, here, although you will need to be able to read Spanish (and, if you do, their attribution to me of svengali-like powers in Graham’s later career rather over-embellishes what in fact was the far humbler role of partner and, lately, latter-day Mrs Miniver).

Britain’s Jazzwise print/web magazine ran one of the first jazz media obits, which can be read here

The LondonJazz site was one of the earliest British net media to run an appreciation, with comment from friends and colleagues, including Django Bates, Ann Cotterrell, editorial director of Northway Books, who published Graham’s 2009 book the jazz composer - moving music off the paper, and our Skopelitian friend, Mike Burton-Pye, among others, which can be seen here

The US jazz web site Rifftides, written by Doug Ramsey, was the first norteamericano site to run an appreciation, which can be read here

Promptly followed by the US print/web magazine, JazzTimes

There was also a short but very moving note by Patrick Jarenwattananon on the web site of National Public Radio in the USA, with links to other comments, here

Graham’s email pings mere minutes before this is posted with a Google Alert for his name and news that the AllAboutJazz web site has an open thread with comments by friends and fans here

And it pinged again 30 minutes later with news that The Telegraph had also just run an obituary, in its Sunday 18 September issue, here

An obituary that touched on Graham’s ability – nay, impulse! – to provoke controversy over the aesthetics of jazz was penned by the writer Peter Hum in the Ottawa Citizen, suggesting that Graham may still be igniting incendiary devices in the jazz agora long after he has gone. One might go off quite soon if Peter Hum follows up his review of Graham’s book the jazz composer on his blog as he says he will.

Alyn Shipton has written to say that the excellent Jazz Library radio programme he made with Graham, discussing musical favourites and Graham’s own compositions, first broadcast on 5 December 2009, will be broadcast again at midnight on 1 October 2011 on BBC Radio 3, with extra material in a tribute to Graham. For internet listeners in the UK, it is also available as a stream at the Jazz Library web site archive at any time.

As well as Duncan Heining’s jazz history, I should also mention that the writer and Austin, Texas, jazz broadcaster Clifford Allen has been preparing a long interview with Graham, effectively the last ever major interview, for the online music magazine, Paris Transatlantic, which will probably appear in the December issue. I have to declare an interest in that my own byline has appeared in it, but I can still say that Paris Trans is a unique repository for millions of words on all manner of contemporary music, and well worth visiting.

There are further obituaries and appreciations in the pipeline, including Jazz Journal, coincidentally also written by Brian Morton. These and others will be added here when they appear, along with any others that I find.

efharistoume pros oloi, thank you to everyone

John Gill, Skopelos


Graham’s original posting on his homepage resumes below.

‘On any short list of the most polemical writers in jazz today, [Graham Collier] is fighting for the top spot.’
Ted Gioia, jazz.com

‘Your discussion of what I like to think of as the jazz identity crisis (i.e., what is jazz and who are we?) is forthright and raises many fascinating issues.’
George E. Lewis, Columbia University

jazzcontinuum is a three-part interconnected site about jazz and related matters, from veteran British jazz composer Graham Collier.
The site has been restructured from the old jazzcontinuum site, and much of the material originally published there will appear here in due course.

jazzcontinuum is also the name of a record label dedicated to keeping Graham Collier’s catalogue permanently available. Click on CDs and Downloads in the menu bar above.

jazz continuum, the name of this site, reflects his view that there is a continuum between the music of the past and what is happening in the best of today’s jazz.
‘jazz happens in real time, once’, the sub-heading, is Graham Collier’s mantra, which he believes should be at the heart of all that is called jazz.

©Karlijne Pietersma

The main entry point to this site is an ongoing Comments column which records Graham’s thoughts on the current state of jazz and jazz composition as well as drawing attention to ideas and events both inside and outside the genre.

Spinning off from this is Writings, the development of these ideas in new or previously written essays and articles, and Choices, entries about anything and everything that should be better known, including trumpeter Harry Beckett, whose death in 2010 was a great loss.



Graham Collier’s previous jazzcontinuum site has been split into two new sites, grahamcolliermusic.com which deals with his life and career as well as recent news, and thejazzcomposer.com a site concentrating on his last book, the jazz composer, moving music off the paper, a philosophical study of jazz composing, and of jazz itself. It asks serious questions about how a music which is meant to be creative, so rarely is. (George Lewis’s quote above is from his comments on the book.)

Graham Collier’s music can be heard in this 13 minute montage. The audio file will open in a new window so you can listen while you look through the site.

Please click on the link below to contact us with any comments on his music or anything he wrote.