![]() Playing six days a week he learnt a vast repertoire of standards that has held him in good stead in a career that has taken him round the country’s key jazz clubs and festivals. Back in England, he began a residency at the Pizza Express in Cambridge. In the 1990s Jersey was home to a vibrant scene, he says. Mostly self-taught, Collie was soon good enough to be making his living in a function band on the Channel Islands where he also played jazz. That’s when I realised, this is what I really want to do.” That was my way in and then I moved on to acoustic jazz. “I got into listening to George Benson and from there the Chick Corea Elektric Band. It led me to playing with friends at school.” He recalls epic jams on Santana’s Black Magic Woman. “I started to play by ear and always loved the idea of improvising. In these, Collie turns interviewer as artists including Jason Rebello, Simon Spillett and Esther Bennett talk about their working lives.Ĭollie’s own path began when his parents, originally from the Seychelles but living in Cambridgeshire, brought a Casio keyboard home when he was 12. Selected recordings can be found on his Mood Indigo Jazz YouTube channel, as can Collie’s My Life in Music videos. “Sometimes we do a project with an artist – paying tribute to Miles or Sonny Rollins … Other times it’s somebody bringing their original tunes.” And almost always Collie is at the piano. Last year he brought Mornington Lockett, Patrick Clahar, Dave and Judith O’Higgins and more to the Thames Street venue. There he has co-promoted monthly jazz gigs under the Mood Indigo Events banner since 2012. ![]() The record was made at the Riverside Arts Centre, the base for Collie’s multi-faceted career. But I would say my favourite players are Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock, Brad Mehldau and Michel Petrucciani.” ![]() It’s difficult to say who my influences are. Six of the tracks are own compositions, three are imaginatively wrought standards.Įphemeral, says Collie, was written this January as the pianist was thinking about his father’s death six years earlier, and he has a knack for creating bittersweet moods that sometimes, to these ears, have a tinge of Bill Evans.īut Collie casts his net wider: “Bill Evans is not a huge influence though I have listened to a lot of his music. But there’s vitality too, on the Arab-inflected “Fauda Blues” or a version of “Caravan” that dances over a Jackson Five bassline. There is a plangent, reflective feel to the opener, “Ephemeral”, that recurs on the title track and on a heartfelt “Don’t Explain”. “All the tracks were first takes – or the first take that went from start through to finish without a break,” says Collie. ![]() It was a snapshot of the moment – a record of what happened. ![]() But making it like that it gave more of a concert feel. “I was in there alone, which is a funny experience because you’re in your own head space there’s no one to talk to. In between takes, he turned on and off the cameras, documenting for later YouTube release. The ingredients were simple: a Yamaha grand piano an empty hall one session to wrap up the album with no more than three takes of any tune – and a good dollop of talent helped.Īlone in the hall in Sunbury-on-Thames, Terence Collie set up the mic’s, pressed the record button and proceeded to conjure the nine tunes that make up his new album, Reminiscent. ![]()
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