Mosaics: The Life and Works of Graham Collier
by Duncan Heining
(Equinox, £39.95)

GRAHAM COLLIER once pithily explained that “jazz happens in real time, once.” True, but there is more than enough fine music on his records, from 1967's Deep Dark Blue Centre to the posthumous Luminosity of 2014 to keep on playing the marvellous sounds that he and his bandmates created.

The life of the composer, bassist, bandleader, jazz author and educator, who was born in Tynemouth in 1937 and died in Crete in 2011, was one singularly marked with contrasts and brave innovations and they are ably set down in Duncan Heining's biography.

Raised in Luton in a working-class home — his father worked in Vauxhall Motors — Collier joined the army on leaving school, was stationed in Hong Kong, learned bass and trombone and played in military bands. On demob he migrated to Boston in the US, studied at Berklee College and began a life in jazz.

Heining documents his life with detailed scholarship and many interviews with fellow musicians. Inspired by Mingus, Davis, Ellington and Evans, Collier developed an integrated orchestral and small-band approach of “what's written and what's improvised,” with epochal albums like Darius, Hoarded Dreams and musical impressions of Malcolm Lowry's classic novel Under the Volcano.

The author chronicles Collier's pioneering role as the first jazz musician to gain Arts Council grants and his groundbreaking role as founder of the jazz degree course at London's Royal Academy of Music. He also describes Collier's struggles and search for acceptance as an openly gay jazzman and expresses with eloquence and insight Collier's work with some of Britain's finest soloists.

Listen for yourself how Harry Beckett's flugelhorn wings over the ensemble in Crumblin' Cookie, to Stan Sulzmann's engine-like tenor saxophone in Down Another Road or the menace of Art Themen's soprano in Symphony of Scorpions.

Like this book, they're an enduring reminder of Collier's powerful musical brain and heart.