Recommended New Release, Graham Collier, 'British Conversations'

Marking the 10th year since the passing of British jazz composer, bassist and bandleader Graham Collier, My Only Desire Records are releasing his previously unreleased 1975 suite, British Conversations. Perhaps a familiar name to fans of the British jazz boom of the ‘60s and ‘70s, Collier first made his name with ‘Graham Collier Music’, an ensemble established to play the composer’s original music, and featuring other regulars of the UK scene at the time including Canadian-born trumpeter Kenny Wheeler and Harry Beckett (the latter of whom plays both trumpet and flugelhorn on this record). With a career spanning over fifty years, his early works in the late ‘60s like Deep Dark Blue Centre and Down Another Road are often cited as Brit jazz classics. The recording of British Conversations comes just after his 1975 record Midnight Blue, a comparatively contemplative album in Collier’s discography, with the jubilant swing of his other work mostly left behind. This would also be followed by the more experimental New Conditions in 1976; British Conversations feels comparatively more deliberate and concerted, nothing like the rest of music he was writing at the time.

On British Conversations, recorded live in concert at Kulturhuset, Stockholm, Collier finds himself in the company of the Swedish Radio Jazz Group, alongside fellow British soloists Harry Beckett and guitarist Ed Speight. The suite itself takes its inspiration from the British obsession with the weather - our go-to smalltalk topic - something My Only Desire have also tapped into with the gorgeous album art. ‘Red Sky in the Morning’ slowly awakens with densely layered horns and a sultry bassline, before it opens up for Beckett to lead us into the first solo of the record - and what a soloist he is - with Speight later coming in for a smooth one of his own, the addition of the electric guitar giving the piece a light jazz-rock feel. Another highlight comes in the triple-duelling trumpet solos on ‘Halo Round the Sun’ - though it’s Beckett who kicks things off, he’s soon joined by two of the Swedish players as they each manage not to trip over one another.

Although it’s not Collier himself on the bass for this recording - that would be Swedish Radio player Georg Riedel - he certainly knows how to bring out the best in the instrument, and British Conversations is full of basslines that both swing and rock, though the real star of the show here remains Collier’s lush horn arrangements. ‘Red Sky at Night’ makes for a nice moody pace-breaker, slow and atmospheric; like much of the suite, it’s got a certain ‘noir’ quality to it, while ‘Clear Moon’ has a very pleasing contrast between the deep brass and fluttering woodwinds. Props to the folks at Gearbox Records for this remaster - taken from the original master tapes - the amount of clarity they’ve managed to squeeze out of these almost 50-year-old tapes is really something. I’d say it’s a crime that this suite wasn’t released sooner, but at the very least it’s great to see it get the treatment it deserves.