Graham Collier was born in Tynemouth, England, in 1937. On leaving school he joined the British Army as a musician, spending three years in Hong Kong. He subsequently won a Down Beat scholarship to the Berklee School of Music, Boston, studying with Herb Pomeroy and becoming its first British graduate in 1963. He was the first recipient of an Arts Council bursary for jazz, and has been commissioned by festivals, groups and broadcasters across Europe, North America, Australia and the Far East. He has produced more than 15 albums and CDs of his music. He has also worked in a wide range of other media: on stage plays and musicals, on documentary and fiction film, and on a variety of radio drama productions.
He is well-known as an author and educator, having written seven books on jazz. In 1987, he launched the jazz degree course at London’s Royal Academy of Music and was its artistic director until resigning in 1999 to concentrate on his own music. He has also given lectures and workshops across Europe, the US, Canada, Australasia and the Far East. In 1989, he was among the group of international jazz educators who formed the International Association of Schools of Jazz. He was awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in 1987.
He currently lives in the mountains of Andalucia, southern Spain, where he continues to compose, travelling from there to present concerts and workshops around the world.
He has 15 CDs currently available and is represented by two tracks on Impressed with Gilles Peterson, the Universal Jazz compilation of British Jazz from the 1960s.