Isaiah Collier Plays Coltrane

“We ain’t partying,” Isaiah Collier told The New York Times in 2024, “and we ain’t all good.” He was talking about the music on The World Is on Fire, the second album he released that year with his powerful band, The Chosen Few. Before heading into the studio, Collier—a towering saxophonist with a flamboyant sense of style and an equally adventurous approach to sound—sent The Chosen Few a playlist of painful news clips, documenting the murder of Black people in the previous five years and the fallout that followed. They responded to those tapes in tandem, raging at the injustice but also finding a sense of hopeful solidarity, all voiced through melodies and rhythms that marched ahead with dignity. Combined with The Almighty, their transcendent and tumultuous LP from earlier in 2024, The World Is on Fire catapulted Collier and The Chosen Few to a new pedestal in jazz.

Gigging across Chicago before he was even a teenager, Collier is a restless band leader and collaborator, enthusiastic about new ideas and opportunities. He has bounced among funk, R&B, and ferocious free jazz in his brief but prolific career. At Big Ears 2026, he explores a new project with a new iteration of The Chosen Few by tapping into the works of John Coltrane. He has long said that Coltrane’s work originated from radical and unstable times, not unlike the United States at present. He digs into Coltrane alongside New York pianist Davis Whitfield and drummer Tim Regis, with whom he cut a magnetic duo album in 2025. Expect them to turn the past toward this uncertain present.