Graham Collier Writings
The problem is probably that those who could really benefit from Collier's visions ... will be the last to be open to conceptions such as creativity, new ways of thinking and responsibility.
- Erling Kroner, Jazz Special, Denmark
Graham Collier has written books, essays and articles, reviews and web pages on a variety of jazz related subjects. The latest, still a work in progress, is a new book, The Jazz Composer, moving music off the paper, a look at the subject in philosophical terms. The synopsis appears below.
His work holds the promise of liberating the music and our classrooms like nothing I have encountered in print.
- Lee Bash on Interaction in the Jazz Educators Journal
Some selected pieces from Graham Collier's previous publications
1) The Shape of Jazz to Come? A panel on the teaching of free jazz from the 2000 IAJE conference in New Orleans, with Allan Chase (New England Conservatory), Ed Sarath (University of Michigan at Ann Arbor) and Graham Collier.
2) The Churchill report on jazz education in America a highly praised analytical look at the jazz education scene in America in the mid 90s. Though much may have changed the points it makes are still very relevant to jazz education around the world today,
3) Lowry, Jazz and the Day of the Dead a talk given at the Malcolm Lowry Conference at the University of British Columbia in 1987. Later published in Swinging the Maelstrom, New Perspectives on Malcolm Lowry.
And some articles from the highly praised magazine Jazz Changes
1) Song for Europe
A discussion between Graham Collier and Janne Murto, saxophonist and principal of the Pop and Jazz Conservatory, Helsinki, regarding a uniquely European jazz aesthetic which they see emerging.
2) Pipe Dreams Hal Galper’s dream that the establishment of a Jazz Masters Guild could avert what some see as the looming crisis in jazz and jazz education has still not come to fruition (surprise, surprise) but its arguments are still sound.
Shorter Pieces
a) Paul Klee and Malcolm Lowry - jazzers in all but name Two artists who may not seem to have much in common with contemporary jazz, but there is a thread running through their attitudes to music which we should find instructive.
b) Kenny G, Pat Metheny and what jazz means to each of us Two artists who do have something in common but we don't have to like what they do (not even Pat Metheny!)
In the future
The Jazz Composer, moving music off the paper is not an exhaustive survey, detailing the life and works of every jazz composer who ever lived, not even just the famous ones. It’s a philosophical look at the phrase ‘the jazz composer’, what it means in jazz, what it means for jazz, what it can mean for the future of jazz.
Part One, defining the situation, discusses the repertoire in terms of some of the tunes that are in common use throughout the music, and the performance, improvisation and arrangement, which are necessary to make them into jazz compositions.
showing the way deals with Duke Ellington and his skill in writing something more than a tune with some arranged elements. The performance is still vital to move it from the paper but the composer’s regard for the individual voices of the players makes this into a different kind of music.
rediscovering the potential looks at how tradition can have a stranglehold on individuality and creativity, how Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman changed jazz for ever in the late 1950s, and how those changes affected jazz as an art, one open to any musician wherever he comes from.
skinning the cat shows the endless opportunities for more to be done with the tune, the arrangement, the composition and improvising now that individuality and collectivism have come back into jazz - and how Duke Ellington’s example is still vital.
directing 14 Jackson Pollocks is a case study of my own work showing my inheritance from Ellington, Gil Evans and Mingus and how I deal with elements such as idea and form, what’s written versus what’s improvised and invisibles such as space and levels. The concluding section shows how what’s on the paper is transformed by the performance.
From time to time short extracts will be published on this page. The first can be found below.
In the present
A short extract from The Jazz Composer
The opening to Chapter 7 why would we want to repeat it? the jazz museum
'If there is one musician who proves that there is no such thing as a limiting, straightjacketed jazz tradition, it is Ellington, which makes it so ironic that he is such a hero to the neoclassicists.’ ~ Eric Nisenson
‘According to Marsalis, jazz went crazy in the 1960s for the same reason the rest of the world did: no one was tough enough, dedicated enough, man enough, to live up to responsibilities. Although it’s difficult to fault Marsalis as a trumpeter or bandleader, I sometimes wonder what it says about this era in jazz that so resolutely conservative a young musician has become its cynosure.’ ~ Francis Davis
‘Tradition is the handing on of fire and not the worship of ashes.’ ~ Gustav Mahler
Those quotes go some way to summing up the problem of the jazz museum. Musicians, fans and critics do want to repeat the past, and Wynton Marsalis came along at the right time to help them do it. But in doing so they - and he - forget what jazz is about, and support this delicious phrase from author Eric Nisenson: ‘Playing music that has been thoroughly explored decades in the past is like rediscovering New Jersey.’
In the past
Current Affairs
A collection of short pieces originally included in the Current section of the Life page which serves to collect Graham's musings - and his occasional 'letters to the editor' - on the state of jazz today.
Jazz Changes
Some articles from the house magazine of the International Association of Schools of Jazz which I co-edited for seven years.
Books
further information will be added soon.
Interaction, Opening Up the Jazz Ensemble, (a Book and CD package from Advance Music, Germany, 1995)
Graham’s highly praised attempt to shake up jazz education and its approach to the big band.
Jazz Workshop the Blues, (Universal Edition 1988)
Jazz a Students’ and Teachers’ Guide (Hardback and Paperback, Cambridge University Press 1977) Translated into German, Norwegian and Italian. (Illustrated above)
Cleo and John (Hardback and Paperback, Quartet Books 1976)
Compositional Devices (Berklee Press Publications , Boston, Mass. 1975)
Inside Jazz (Hardback and Paperback, Quartet Books 1973)
NB Except for Interaction and Jazz Workshop the Blues, all the books are now out of print, but copies may be found languishing in the deeper recesses of libraries or on eBay.
‘Speaking many years later it hasn’t been much of a surprise that not one of these books has produced what one could call reasonable royalties, despite the claims made when contracts were signed. The Cambridge Press editor claimed that Jazz, a Students’ and Teachers’ Guide would ‘become a classroom textbook and bring in royalties for many many years’. It didn’t, but their business acumen was shown in the fact that they licensed translations into German, Italian and Norwegian. None of the editions seemed to sell well either, and the result has been that I have been shafted in three more languages!’
Graham Collier, January 2006
Essays and Articles
List being compiled
Reviews
As well as book and record reviews in the pages of Jazz Changes, Graham has also contributed to Time Out, Gay News, Jazz on CD and, a long time ago, The Melody Maker.
Web Pages
For many years jazzcontinuum.com has carried articles and discussions by Graham under the title This is not a book. In an ironic twist of fate this became a book when much of it got subsumed, alongside a lot of new thinking, into his new The Jazz Composer project. These pages are in the process of being edited to make a more manageable project on this site.
Some of this material originally appeared in Jazz Changes, the magazine of the International Association of Schools of Jazz and sections of that magazine will also be made available on line as time permits. See Jazz Changes above.
Three pieces from these sources are now available on this site. See the top of this page.