Isaiah Collier: Collier Plays Coltrane

“heir apparent to both the Chicago lineage and the post-Coltrane sax tradition” – New York Times One of today’s most exciting saxophonists celebrates John Coltrane’s centennial! Isaiah Collier is a musical virtuoso in the truest sense of the phrase. He began playing saxophone at age eleven, and his intuitive proficiency earned him attention early on. Ever since, his band Isaiah Collier and The Chosen Few has been turning ears. In 2025 he was featured on NPR’s “Jazz Night in America”, and graced the cover of Downbeat Magazine. Additionally, Chicago Tribune named him 2024’s Jazz Artist of the Year. New York Times selected his album The Almighty as one of the Top Ten Jazz Recordings of 2024. Furthermore, The New York Times 2024 Fall Arts Preview featured him. Downbeat selected him as one of twenty-five for the future in 2024’s Ninetieth Anniversary issue. Also, he won the Rising Star Award in Downbeat Magazine’s critics poll for tenor saxophone (2023), and soprano saxophone (2024). Then, he was 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. Here, 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. Thus, 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.” Recommended for fans of John Coltrane, Kamasi Washington, Pharoah Sanders and Wayne Shorter. 📸: Johanna Brinckmann