Jeremy "Jaz" Coleman (born 26 February 1960) is an English singer and musician. He came to prominence in the early 1980s as the lead vocalist and keyboardist of post-punk group Killing Joke, of which he has been the only constant member. In addition, Coleman has composed orchestral and soundtrack pieces.
As Killing Joke's singer, Coleman is known for his raspy baritone voice and intense stage presence (occasionally appearing wearing face makeup). Bill Janovitz, a writer for the website AllMusic, described Coleman's stage presence and voice as "almost always full-on in his approach, with a terrifying growl of a voice that is similar to that of Motörhead's Lemmy". In the first part of their career, Coleman also played synth while singing, adding electronic atonal sounds to create a disturbing atmosphere to their music. He still continues to play keyboards and synths in studio recordings. James Hetfield picked Coleman as one of his favourite singers. In November 2010, the band received the "Innovator Award" at the 2010 Classic Rock Roll of Honour; the award was presented to Killing Joke by admirer and friend Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, who stated: "I go back a long way with Jaz Coleman and the band. I used to go and see the band, and it was a band that really impressed me."
He moved to New Zealand in the 1990s and became a citizen of that country in 2018.
Coleman was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England, to Ronald A. and Gloria H. (née Pandy) Coleman: an English father and an Anglo-Indian mother of half-Bengali descent, both of whom were school teachers. He studied piano and violin under Eric Coleridge, head of music for Cheltenham College, until the age of 17, and was a member of several cathedral choirs in England.
Coleman studied in Leipzig, East Germany, in 1978, and Cairo Conservatoire in 1979, completing an extensive study of Arabic quarter tones at the latter institution. According to his own account, Coleman also studied international banking for three years in Switzerland and is an ordained priest with a church in New Zealand.
In 1978, Coleman founded Killing Joke with drummer Paul Ferguson in Notting Hill, England. The pair then recruited guitarist Geordie Walker and bassist Martin Glover (a.k.a. Youth). The group released their first single in October 1979 and their first eponymous album was released in 1980. Coleman told biographer Jyrki "Spider" Hämäläinen that forming the band felt "it was the destiny". Coleman contributed lead vocals and keyboards to the band's songs, which are categorised as post-punk, and the music later inspired the industrial rock and metal genres.
Solo composition and recordings
Coleman travelled to Iceland and announced his intention to become a classical composer. Ten years of studying and ongoing Killing Joke involvement later, he commenced conducting and worked with some of the world's leading orchestras. Conductor Klaus Tennstedt described him as a "new Mahler".
In 1990, in collaboration with Anne Dudley and the French-Algerian-Jewish singer and talented guitarist Enrico Macias Coleman released his first purely instrumental album entitled Songs from the Victorious City, which is formally classified as "World Music", but is primarily composed of a mixture of middle eastern folk themes mixed with western pop-oriented themes. The album received media coverage including a report on BBC2's Rapido.
In 1995, Coleman released his first of three albums of symphonic rock music: Us and Them: Symphonic Pink Floyd, which peaked at number one in the Billboard Magazine Top Classical Crossover Albums chart, and Kashmir: Symphonic Led Zeppelin were both written and produced by Coleman with Peter Scholes conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra. In June 2007, Coleman collaborated with over 150 youth musicians in the Contemporary Youth Orchestra, based in Cleveland, Ohio, to perform the entirety of Kashmir: Symphonic Led Zeppelin along with additional orchestrations of Led Zeppelin's music. In 1999, he produced and arranged an album of Doors material for orchestra, performed by classical musicians including Nigel Kennedy and the Prague Symphony Orchestra, called Riders on the Storm: The Doors Concerto (CD released in 2000). He has worked with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, who have issued a CD of his Symphony No. 1 "Idavoll" with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, and as composer-in-residence to the Prague Symphony Orchestra.
In 1996, he released Pacifica: Ambient Sketches, recorded with the New Zealand String Quartet.
In 1999, Coleman and Maori singer Hinewehi Mohi formed Oceania (with Hirini Melbourne and many others) which recorded the album Oceania. The record went double platinum in New Zealand. The song "Pukaea" appeared in the film Year of the Devil (2002). Oceania II appeared in 2002.
In 2001, Coleman was commissioned by the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden London for his first large scale opera entitled The Marriage at Cana.
Also commissioned by the Royal Opera House was Coleman's Unwanted, a concerto grosso for violin, viola and string orchestra whose theme portrays the plight of the Romany people of central Europe. This work was in collaboration with Czech photographer Jana Tržilová, whose portraits of the Roma taken within her own country moved the composer with their deep compassion and humanity.
On 22 March 2003, Coleman was commissioned by the Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter (ICAM) to compose a three-part concerto Music of the Quantum, expressing the ideas of the quantum and emergence in musical form, which he co-produced with his elder brother, Piers Coleman (born 13 February 1958), who is a condensed matter physicist at Rutgers University.
On 22 March, Sir Laurence Gardner's book Secrets of the Lost Ark, which expounds on anti-gravity and prehistory, was published. Coleman and Gardner publicly exchanged their work (book and scores) at the Occulture Lectures in Brighton on 20 July 2003, a gesture appropriate to Coleman's interest in themes of renaissance, collaboration, and working in parallels.
Also in 2003, Coleman completed a second work with Nigel Kennedy and the Kroke Trio in the role of friend and producer of their album, East Meets East, released through EMI Classics.
In 2004 and 2005, Coleman arranged the Sarah Brightman album Harem and wrote a further 12 Arias to be recorded with her. He also continues with his work as composer in residence of the Prague Symphony Orchestra. In early 2006 Joseph McManners performed Coleman's Daughter of England at the Royal Albert Hall with the Royal Philharmonic to standing ovation.