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James Graham Collier (born 21 February 1937, Tynemouth, Northumberland) is an English jazz bassist, bandleader and composer.

On leaving school he joined the British Army as a musician, spending three years in Hong Kong. He subsequently won a Down Beat magazine scholarship to the Berklee School of Music, Boston, studying with Herb Pomeroy and was its first British graduate in 1963. Collier 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 19 albums and CDs of his music and 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.

Collier is also an author and educator, having written seven books on jazz and given lectures and workshops around the world. 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. In 1989, Collier was among the group of jazz educators who formed the International Association of Schools of Jazz, whose magazine, Jazz Changes, he co-edited for seven years. He was awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in 1987 for his services to jazz.

Collier lives on a small island in Greece, where he composes, writes and administers his back catalogue, travelling to present concerts and workshops around the world. His book, The Jazz Composer: Moving Music Off the Paper, a philosophical look at jazz and jazz composing, was published by Northway Books in 2005, and his nineteenth CD, directing 14 Jackson Pollocks, mainly recorded in 2004, has been issued by the jazzcontinuum label.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Graham Collier", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0