Coming out of the vibrant Chicago scene, multi-instrumentalist, composer, curator, activist, and educator Isaiah Collier has made a name for himself in music. An alumnus of the Jazz Institute of Chicago and The Chicago High School for the Performing Arts, Collier has worked and played with Chicago legends such as Willie Pickens, Delores Scott, Ernest Dawkins, Ari Brown, Dee Alexander, Maggie Brown, Robert Irving III, and Charles Heath IV, in addition to national and international artists such as Rene Marie, Chance the Rapper, Stefon Harris, Roy McCurty, Carmen Bradford, Carl Allen, Bennie Maupin, Bobby Broom, Quincy Phillips, Lisa Henry, Wyclef Gordon, Lewis Nash, and the AACM.
Collier draws influence from saxophone masters such as John Coltrane, Ari Brown, Roscoe Mitchell, and Gene Ammons. He has had many mentors, including Antonio Hart, Joan Collaso, Ari Brown, Willie Pickens, Ernest Dawkins, Bennie Maupin, James Perkins, Charles Heath, Bobby Watson, and others.
Cosmic Transitions, his 2021 release with his band The Chosen Few, earned a five-star review from Downbeat and multiple Album of the Year accolades, amongst other praises.
The powerful suite was recorded at Rudy Van Gelder's legendary Studio on John Coltrane’s birthday, using some of the same analog equipment that was used for the original recording session of A Love Supreme. It not only showcases Collier’s extensive musical range and expressive talent but achieves to honor the tradition in which it inscribes itself, whilst also remaining decisively forward-looking.
The album “consolidated Collier’s reputation as a shamanic saxophone prodigy (he’s also an adept multi-instrumentalist with a fine voice) and showed that his admiration for the spiritual jazz of Coltrane, Sun Ra and Pharoah Sanders is about inspiration rather than imitation,” according to The Guardian.
