Graham Collier Collection

James Graham Collier, more frequently known as simply Graham Collier, was a British Jazz musician, composer, bandleader and educator who lived from 1937 until 2011, his contribution to the genre was so great that he was given an OBE in 1987 for his services to Jazz.

Graham Colliers’ jazz career spanned decades and included many notable achievements again and again.  To summarise his career and output briefly,   Graham was the first British Graduate of the Berklee School of Music, in Boston, USA.  He was the first recipient of an Arts Council Bursary for Jazz, he launched a Jazz course at London’s Royal Academy of Music for which he taught from 1987 to 1999, wrote seven books on Jazz, produced 19 CDs and worked on stage plays, musicals, tv, radio and film as well as producing his own music.  

The collection at the Arts, Design and Media Archive contains a variety of items related to Graham Colliers life and career. Approximately half of the collection are music scores while the rest relates to his personal life and career.  Among the personal archives are photographs and correspondence while the career archives feature notes on compositions, research notes on music and musicians, flyers, newspaper cuttings, commissions and correspondence about events. The archive presents an opportunity to explore the life and career of a remarkable British Jazz Musician. 

From January to May 2026, the Arts Design and Media Archive hosted a 2^nd year 70 hour Placement student who worked upon the collection. They repacked, organised and arranged the collection prior to starting to catalogue the collection. They also produced a poster and short blog of their experience working with the Graham Collier collection which can be found here.

While the collection is not yet fully catalogued, this will be a much longer task to complete, we are very grateful for the hard work of the student who has started this work off, and to all other students whom have, or will help us with collections in the future.