Biography
A skilled Canadian trombonist who also composes and arranges, Ron Collier earned widest notice through his partnerships with Duke Ellington during the 1970s. He had earlier joined Canada’s modest third-stream jazz circle in the closing years of the 1950s, accompanied touring figures such as Billie Holiday, and performed under forward-thinking directors including George Russell and Charles Mingus. Collier’s success in securing Canada Council support for work with Russell marked the first occasion that agency had awarded funds to a jazz musician, a distinction he has willingly claimed amid Canada’s receptive grant climate. During the opening half of the 1950s he stood out as the leading pupil of the Delamont musical lineage, an Ontario family of bandleaders and composers. Training began with the Kitsilano Boys Band led by Arthur Delamont; later he pursued composition studies in Toronto under the next generation, represented by Gordon Delamont. This phase found Collier engaging directly with Russell and generating sufficient third-stream material to be counted within Canada’s limited late-1950s third-stream activity, although harsh northern weather might have been expected to curtail such efforts. Toronto’s jazz environment nevertheless remained active enough that the city could be said to host more jazz than snowfall, allowing Collier to recruit willing partners for any undertaking. Norman Symonds, a composer a decade older, became a regular associate in these third-stream explorations. Outside jazz circles Collier toured Canada with Mart Kenney and His Western Gentlemen and supplied music for the National Ballet. He also received Canada Council assistance for lessons with orchestrator Hall Overton. In 1967 producer Louis Applebaum assembled the event that first united Collier with Ellington. The program spotlighted three Canadian composers—Symonds, Gordon Delamont, and Collier—and Ellington’s involvement yielded an Attic album featuring two of Collier’s best-known pieces, “Aurora Borealis” and “Silent Night, Lonely Night.” The following year Collier conducted an orchestra with Ellington as soloist in Detroit, again presenting his own compositions. Ellington soon enlisted Collier to prepare arrangements for a new recording; initial sessions proceeded smoothly until trombonist Lawrence Brown examined one of his parts and declared, “I’m not gonna play that! I don’t have the chops!” The solo then passed to altoist Johnny Hodges. Collier later assisted Ellington in preparing a concert at a Benedictine monastery in Oregon and supplied orchestrations for the ballet suite The River. As with many of Ellington’s arranging colleagues, substantial portions of the finished scores and performances originated with Collier, since Ellington typically supplied only melodic lines and chord symbols and left the remainder to his collaborator. In 1974 Collier joined the faculty of Toronto’s Humber College. Before retiring he generated extensive quantities of scores, often under pressure caused by insufficient existing arrangements for the school’s smaller ensembles. Over time he wrote for every conceivable instrumental grouping, among them solo flute with piano, string ensembles, woodwind and brass choirs, full orchestra, concert band, big band, and studio orchestras. Representative works include “The Humber Suite,” “Four Kisses,” and “Gentleman Harry,” one of numerous tributes composed for Ellington’s longtime baritone saxophonist Harry Carney. In the early 1970s he also composed three film scores, among them A Fan’s Notes. Following retirement Collier maintained an active schedule of writing projects. In 1997 he completed an expansive arrangement of Oscar Peterson’s “Canadiana Suite” for jazz orchestra. The eight-movement version, evoking a prairie crossing from Winnipeg to Calgary, lasts roughly an hour rather than the twelve hours such a journey would require. Its premiere took place in Vancouver in 1997, with subsequent performances at the Toronto and Ottawa jazz festivals the next year. Ron Collier’s Jazz Orchestra appeared in a 1999 Ellington Centennial concert alongside the Nathaniel Dett Chorale. After an extensive career, Collier died of cancer on October 22, 2003, at the age of 73.