James Graham Collier (born February 21, 1937 in Tynemouth) is a jazz bandleader and composer.

He 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 known as a bandleader and has been 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.

Works

Discography (selection)

• Workpoints (1967)
• Songs for My Father (1970)
• New Conditions (1976)

Books

• Jazz - A Students’ and Teachers’ Guide (Hardback and Paperback, Cambridge University Press 1977) Translated into German, Norwegian and Italian.
• Inside Jazz (Hardback and Paperback, Quartet Books 1973)
• Compositional Devices (Berklee Press Publications , Boston, Mass. 1975)
• Cleo and John (Quartet Books 1976)
• Jazz Workshop the Blues, (Universal Edition 1988) ISBN 0-900938-61-7
• Interaction – Opening Up the Jazz Ensemble (1998)

External links

• Collier's website
• BBC Radio 2
• All Music

References

• Martin Kunzler, Jazz-Enzyklopädie Vol. 1. Rowohlt, Hamburg. ISBN 3-499-16512-0, p. 230f.