Collier, Graham

Hoarded Dreams

Label: Cuneiform Country: USA

"Graham Collier is one of the best known and most important British jazz composers and over a 40 year career, his list of compositions and commissions has grown to encompass ensembles around the world. He is well-known as an author and educator, having written seven books on jazz. Hoarded Dreams is a previously unreleased long-form composition heard here in a powerful live performance from 1983 by an international all-star band that includes Tomasz Stanko, Conny Bauer, Malcolm Griffiths, Eje Thelin, Ed Speight, Roger Dean, Ted Curson, John Surman, Manfred Schoof, Kenny Wheeler, Art Themen and many others. " I came across the phrase "Hoarded Dreams" in a book...it seemed an ideal title for this commission, [which] is the realisation of the jazz composer's constant dream: to be able to hand-pick a group of star musicians to perform a long composition written with absolutely no outside restrictions... . Overall the piece inhabits (as indeed does most of my writing) that area between the purely written and the purely improvised."-Graham Collier. The energy of the ensemble performing the piece in front of a large and enthusiastic audience is very obvious on the recording and there's some great soloing as well as ensemble passages."-Cuneiform Records