Graham Collier, 1937 – 2011

Jazz happened in real time, once,
in Parma, Italy, in November

Graham’s good friend and colleague, the admired Italian composer, bassist and bandleader Roberto Bonati, programmed and conducted an “omaggio” to Graham at the 2011 Parmajazz Frontiere Festival in his hometown of Parma, in northern Italy, in November. Conducting Ruvido Insieme (uncertain trans: “rough assembly”), a seventeen-piece big band that he and Graham had worked with in workshops and concerts in 2009, Roberto gave a magnificent example of “moving music off the paper” in a set that included old and new pieces, from a radically re-imagined ‘Aberdeen Angus’ to the title piece from Winter Oranges and ‘Out Blues’ from The Third Colour, as well as what amounted to the European premiere of one of the last of Graham’s longer pieces, The Blue Suite (2006), an, ahem, post-structuralist meditation on Kind of Blue. Roberto also gave the first performance of a piece he had written as a tribute to Graham, ‘Quiet Sea’, a gorgeous folk-tinged work that might, with its martial percussion and swaying rhythms, have been a wink to Nino Rota or perhaps even Roberto essaying his own take on Miles Davis’s ‘Vonetta’ factor from Sorcerer. Even if it was Roberto taking it for a walk, the dog still had the owner’s name on its collar, and thanks to Roberto it was entirely in the spirit that Graham intended his music to be taken and remade by others. As someone said in very bad phrasebook Italian over pizza afterwards, Graham was very much there in spirit that evening, applauding.

photos courtesy of Pietro Bandini/Phocus Agency

It’s hoped that this was just the first of many concerts in this 75th birthday year and beyond, and there are already discussions under way of similar events in London, Athens, Australia and elsewhere.

And as Graham had already taken it upon himself to recommend his work to friends, Roberto’s own recordings, such as the ‘fragments from Moby-Dick’ featured in his A Silvery Silence, his ‘study for Lady Macbeth’, The Blanket of the Dark, his multi-media investigation of the murder of Pier Paolo Pasolini on Un Sospeso Silenzio, and others, all of which accompanied the recent retooling of the jazzcontinuum website, should be sought out in earnest. In fact, you can watch Roberto’s trio performing their exquisite ‘Miserere II’ from the November festival at YouTube, where there are a number of other YouTube films of various Bonati pieces, including the Pasolini project.

Below is a YouTube posting by our friends at ParmaJazz Frontiere of Roberto conducting Ruvido Insieme in the premiere of his gorgeous tribute to Graham, ‘Quiet Sea’.



While below is their full-on reading of the title track from Winter Oranges.



Their rambunctious rendition of ‘Aberdeen Angus’ should follow shortly.

The good folks at ParmaJazz are also promising to upload a hi res version of parts of the 2009 concert that Graham himself conducted. We expect it to be up in a matter of weeks, when there will also be a link to it here. Enjoy!

Normal jazzcontinuum transmissions continue 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.