Double bassist and composer
Graham Collier was the first Briton to graduate from the prestigious Berklee School Of Music in Boston in the early 1960s. Once back in England, this gave him the right credit to form a band full of young musicians who would individually make their mark on the British jazz of the 1960s and 1970s. For example, the company with which Collier touched down in Stockholm in
… 1969 included trombonist Nick Evans and trumpeter Harry Beckett. Reed player and pianist Karl Jenkins and drummer John Marshall would later go on to play important roles in the jazz rock bands Nucleus and Soft Machine. No wonder a steaming whole sounds on these beautifully polished live recordings from 1969. One brims with typical British jazz of the time, with influences from modal jazz and free jazz and the view of both America and Europe. It shows that Collier, who died in 2011, was a gifted bandleader. (MR)more
