Isaiah Collier

APPEARING: BROOKLYN MARATHON @ Brooklyn Bowl

Saturday, January 11, 2025

Twenty-six-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.

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. “That’s how I hear. There has to be a balance.”

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.”