Twenty-five-year-old Isaiah Collier is a musical virtuoso in the truest sense of the phrase. He began playing saxophone at age 11, and his intuitive proficiency earned him attention early on. Ever since, his band Isaiah Collier and The Chosen Few has been turning ears.
The Chicago Tribune named him Jazz Artists of the Year for 2024. His recording The Almighty (Division 81 Records, 2024) was selected as one of the Top Ten Jazz Recordings of 2024 by The New York Times. He was featured in The New York Times Fall Arts Preview in September 2024. Downbeat Magazine selected him as one of 25 for the future in their 90th Anniversary issue in July 2024. He is a the winner of Rising Star Award in Downbeat Magazine’s critics poll for Tenor Saxophone (2023), and Soprano Saxophone (2024), and has been named a Steve Jobs Fellow.
There’s a regal, elegant manner to Isaiah’s stage presence: he’s over 6 feet tall, thin, deep brown, with high cheekbones. When not playing, he is patiently waiting—not contemplating his next move, but listening to the musicians who accompany him, listening to their stories. He explains that he’s never really hearing himself, he’s hearing others play: some people have fire, others have air.
Isaiah Coller’s sound is a dynamic flurry of metaphors, yet he can hold back when necessary. He plays his influences, which he describes as a “sonic time machine; you can’t really put a time or destination on it.” As far as he where he plans to take his music, Collier says, “I reach backwards, and forwards simultaneously when creating art and what is ahead of me is the past.”
He has released six albums to date, The Almighty (Division 81 Records, 2024), which was chosen by The New York Times as one of the 10 best jazz albums of 2024, Parallel Universe (Night Dreamer, 2023), I AM BEYOND (Division 81 Records, 2022), Cosmic Transitions (JAZZ, 2021), and Return of the Black Emperor (JAZZ, 2018). His latest release The World Is On Fire (Division 81 Records, 2024) is receiving wide critical acclaim.
