The late bassist, composer and author Graham Collier was a key figure in British jazz who spent 40 years probing the boundaries between composition and improvisation. As Collier said: “Jazz happens in real time once.” The problem for jazz composers is “getting the music off the page” to keep improvised music live and fresh. His recorded legacy is witness to his success.
Collier released his first album Deep Dark Blue Centre in 1967, followed by around 20 more before he died in 2011, aged 74. This album, a previously unreleased live concert recording from 1975, presents a one-off performance of a five-part suite inspired by the vagaries of the British climate — the “conversations” of the album’s title refer to the British trait of talking about the weather.
The American influence remains strong — that of Gil Evans and Charles Mingus is clear. But Collier’s orchestral palette, fluid sense of form and his way of blending rock rhythms with jazz take a different tack. And as befits Britain’s restless weather, there are unpredictable shifts in texture, rhythm and mood.
The work, commissioned and recorded by Sveriges Radio, finds Collier conducting the impressive Swedish Radio Jazz Group through a series of evolving musical tableaux; trumpeter Harold Beckett and guitarist Ed Speight are much-featured British guests.
The performance opens with “Red Sky in the Morning” and a sheen of brass vibrating over trombones twinned with bass. As the piece develops, first Beckett and then Speight slow-burn over piano vamps and propulsive orchestral riffs; the finale is a thrilling orchestrated duet. “Clear Moon” comes next, romantically entwining guitar with soloists from the orchestra’s ranks. And then a stirring trumpet joust, “Halo Round the Sun”, is followed by “Red Sky at Night”, a study of orchestral texture at ballad speed.
Soloists fly free and the rhythm section impresses, but it’s the rhythmic thrust and panoramic sweep of Collier’s orchestrations that give the performance its elastic bounce. “Mackerel Sky” is the closer, a 13-minute up-tempo blast of energy ending on a high-note peak.
★★★★☆
‘British Conversations’ is released by My Only Desire Records
Graham Collier: British Conversations — unpredictable shifts
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