His next album, New Memories (2002), was hailed as “the most expansive, expressive and exciting new jazz orchestral sound to have emerged in this country since the late-lamented Loose Tubes” by John Fordham in The Guardian.
“An exuberant and remarkable talent, Koller’s music is full of surprises.” – Ian Carr – Rough Guide to Jazz, 3rd edition (2004).
Over the next decade Koller worked on refining his sound, writing for Steve Lacy (London Ear ), working in large group contexts with Evan Parker, and with Kenny Wheeler and Bob Brookmeyer, performing and recording with the NDR Bigband (Scenic Routes ), as well as playing piano in various groups led by Mike Gibbs (including a tour of England in 2007 alongside Steve Swallow, Bill Frisell and Adam Nussbaum).
Subsequently, Koller produced a number of significant outputs of his own music including performances with Phil Woods and the BBC Big Band, a project with Dave Liebman, writing for the WDR Big Band with Gerard Presencer, a project with the HR Big Band, and, in 2009, an album with Bill Frisell and Evan Parker (Cry, Want ). Koller had by then begun to focus on valve trombone, inspired by a 2006 study/stay at Bob Brookmeyer’s house, and started a fruitful small band partnership with drummer Jeff Williams, and bassist/trumpet player Percy Pursglove. He recorded quartet albums for Babel (Chasing the Unicorn), with Paris-based Canadian saxophonist François Théberge, for Evan Parker’s PSI label with the legendary German saxophonist Gerd Dudek (Day and Night), and in 2011 started forming a formidable creative partnership with NYC altoist John O’Gallagher. On their first meeting, Koller and O’Gallagher were memorably described by John Fordham in The Guardian as “two heavyweight theoreticians fizzing with jazz heat”, and the pair went on to work regularly, producing two BBC Radio 3 broadcasts, performances and recordings in both large ensemble and quartet contexts, and collaborating in a 2015 commission from Jazzlines to write for the renowned BCMG (Birmingham Contemporary Music Group).
Koller’s most ambitious work, his 2016 triple vinyl release Retrospection (on Stoney Lane Records), brought together over 30 of the world’s leading jazz musicians, including Steve Swallow, Jakob Bro, and the NDR Bigband.
Growing up in rural Bavaria, Koller first came into contact with jazz musicians in his teens while attending jazz summer schools run by Brian Abraham’s District Six in Ingolstadt. In 1991 he came to England, first to Middlesex University where he majored in composition, then at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) where he obtained a masters degree in Ethnomusicology.
Creative Practice:
Over the last 20 years Koller has created a substantial body of over 80 original compositions, recorded in fourteen critically acclaimed albums. His works have been performed, interpreted and/or documented in collaboration with many of the leading lights of contemporary jazz such Bill Frisell, and Steve Swallow, with the pioneers of the early Avant-garde such as Steve Lacy, Alexander von Schlippenbach and Evan Parker, and with the genre-defining, ground-breaking composers/improvisers Bob Brookmeyer, and Kenny Wheeler.
Chris Parker described Koller as “simply one of the UK’s most individual voices, both as a composer and pianist”. His début big band album New Memories from 2002 was hailed by John Fordham in the Guardian as “the most expansive, expressive and exciting new jazz orchestral sound to have emerged in this country since the late-lamented Loose Tubes” and his 2011 record with Bill Frisell was named an “instant classic” by John Eyles, giving it five stars. His recent triple vinyl release received five stars in Jazz Journal, as well as from Mike Gates (UK Vibe) who described the recordings as “an incredible achievement [which] have to be rated as one of the most important and musically rewarding releases of 2016.” Matt Miller, writing in New York City Jazz Record, described him as “an artist steeped in tradition but with a distinct voice of his own”, while Dave Gelly, writing in the Observer, went as far as saying that “like his piano playing, Koller’s writing for large ensemble is difficult to describe because it doesn’t sound remotely like anyone else’s.” Michael Tucker noted that his “approach to the interplay of the historical and the contemporary is as open-minded as it is creative”. Ian Carr, in his entry on Koller in the Rough Guide to Jazz (4th edition), remarked: “Koller is an exuberant talent, his music full of surprises”. And John Fordham, who has written on his work regularly since the early 2000s commented in 2016: “Koller solves the perpetual jazz conundrum of making music for the mind and the body […] with an intelligence and vivacity that brings him ever closer to the stature of George Russell, Gil Evans, Mike Gibbs, and that long procession of his famous elders”.
Conceptually, the body of work that Koller has created is important through the way in which it challenges prevailing, orthodox ideas about innovation and tradition in jazz. He has always looked at the history of jazz as a history of continuous renewal and re-invention. His rapport and collaborations with Steve Lacy (saxophonist with Thelonious Monk in 1960), with Dave Liebman (saxophonist with Miles Davis 1970-74), and with Bob Brookmeyer (trombonist with Stan Getz and Gerry Mulligan 1954-1957) has helped positioning his works in the context of jazz history, yet he has always viewed tradition and innovation as two sides of the same coin, in much the same way as he approach composition and improvisation as essentially complementary. The development of jazz language is, in his mind, an on-going process, occurring cumulatively, i.e. innovations build on one another without the need to eschew previously valid ideas. Koller considers jazz as an attitude to music making, rather than a circumscribed style. In addition, intrinsic to jazz language is the idea of cross-genre. From its local beginnings to its global present jazz is essentially a musical fusion. He continues to be inspired from within but at the same time he regards crucial work with musicians from outside jazz, and also to adopt and adapt methodologies, concepts, ideas and traditions from outside jazz – to illuminate the inside…
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