More about Hoarded Dreams

Hoarded Dreams, documentary and profile

Bright Thoughts were commissioned by Andy Park of Channel 4 to make this documentary profiling Graham Collier as a Jazz composer and to follow the development of this work from its inception through to the live improvised performance at the Bracknell Jazz Festival.

Included are interviews and discussions with renown Jazz critics, his partner John Gill, and the Arts Council Jazz Officer. Importantly, the composer gives us insight as an openly gay man, his views not only about the composition but also about Jazz and this specialist sub-sect within the world of music.

We see Graham working at home as he explains the context of the piece, the motivation behind its title, the composition itself, who and what inspires him and particularly Herb Pomeroy and Duke Ellington.

Hoarded Dreams - extract

Extract of one of the interviews with composer Graham Collier, plus a sample of the live performance at the Bracknell Jazz Festival.

What they say . . .

'A luminous performance, on a par with any of Ellington's late suites.

‘One of the remarkable things about Hoarded Dreams, and perhaps only equalled by Charles Mingus, is the seamlessness of written material and improvisation. … Without an overt political or social programme, it still delivers an expression of togetherness and individuality in balance that is hard to beat. … Collier’s dream-hoard is rich, sometimes strange and entirely free of British whimsy. A lastingly satisfying experience.’

The Penguin Jazz Guide

70 minutes of dazzling solos and exchanges, what really could be described as musical fireworks.

Charles Fox, The New Statesman

You couldn’t tell where improvisation ended and writing took over… The whole conception was bold and the playing magnificent.

Dave Gelly, The Observer

This was something special in jazz writing; something that was reflected in the inspiration which the piece gave to the soloists.

Roger Cotterrell, The Wire

After listening to it on Radio Three it was most exciting to see the same performance of Graham Collier's Hoarded Dreams on television where Channel 4's engineers were able to achieve an excellent sound balance out in the open.

Jazz Journal International

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Graham Collier OBE

In a career spanning 40 years, Collier has composed dozens of works for numerous commissions, released over 17 albums, led bands that helped incubate some of England’s best jazz talents.

Collier’s work as a bandleader is his most dynamic contribution to the legacy of British jazz. Jazz writer Clifford Allen notes that Collier’s bands were in the forefront of European improvised music during the 1960s, alongside those led by the reedmen Ronnie Scott, Tubby Hayes, John Surman, and drummer John Stevens. Allen also notes that out of all the ensembles that flourished during jazz’s coming of age, only Collier’s remains viable and innovative to the present day.

The Life and Works of Graham Collier

Graham Collier emerges as a contradictory figure falling between several different camps. He was never an out-and-out musical, cultural or political radical but rather an individualist continually forced to confront the contradictions in his own position – a musical outsider working within a marginalised area of cultural activity; a gay man operating in a very male area of the music business and within heterosexist culture in general; a man of working class origins stepping outside traditionally prescribed class boundaries; and a musician-composer seeking individual solutions to collective problems of aesthetic and ethical value.

ISBN-13 (Hardback) 9781781792636
ISBN (eBook) 9781781796504

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