Graham Collier

*2022 stock* 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.