By Des Cowley.
In mid-May, Chicago saxophonist Isaiah Collier returns to Melbourne to play a series of shows at Birds Basement. Collier was last here April 2024, playing the same venue with his band the Chosen Few. For some unfathomable reason – and I’m loath to confess it – I just wasn’t up to speed on his music, and failed to get along. Thereafter, I would run into friends, raving about the gigs.
This time round, thankfully, I’m wised up. In the meantime, I’ve steeped myself in his recorded output, starting with his jaw-dropping debut Cosmic Transitions, made in 2020 at Rudy van Gelders’s studio when Collier was just 23-years of age. For the album, he recorded on the same analog equipment John Coltrane used for his masterpiece A Love Supreme in 1964. With that sort of pedigree, little wonder it garnered a five-star review in Downbeat magazine.
Since then, Collier has released a series of albums that have cemented his place as one of the most exciting talents on the scene. There was 2022’s heavyweight sax/drums duets with percussionist Michael Shekwoaga Ode (conjuring Coltrane’s searing duets with Rahid Ali on Interstellar Space); his EP Lift Every Voice (2022), a sublime hymn to the enduring survival of Black America; and The Almighty (2024), which saw him broadening his musical palette, incorporating strings and a horn section. He threw something of a curveball with Parallel Universe (2023), which mined seventies soul, R&B, and funk, channeling Gil Scott-Heron, Fela Kuti and George Clinton. Latest double EP The World is on Fire presents further maturation, with Collier confronting the state of America head-on. It’s a blistering recording that, more than half-a-century on, evokes the angry cry of Max Roach’s We Insist! or Sonny Rollins Freedom Suite.
Collier is steeped in the radical, avant-garde evolution of Chicago jazz, birthplace of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) – of which Collier is an official member – originally founded in 1965 by pianist Muhal Richards Abrams (and others), and boasting a lineage of players that includes Fred Anderson, Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, Kalil El’Zabar, Wadada Leo Smith, Nicole Smith. At the same time, Collier’s music transmits a seam of spiritual jazz rooted in the music of John and Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Albert Ayler, Don Cherry. Along with Kamasi Washington and Shabaka Hutchings, Collier’s music forms a bridge to that important ancestry.
It’s galvanizing, then, to learn that Collier’s Melbourne shows will delve into the music of John Coltrane. Few musicians are better placed than Collier to dig into Coltrane’s fiercely intense, beautifully wrought, and wide-ranging canon. It’s an undertaking that requires deep spirituality and stellar musicianship. Of course, don’t expect some retro homage, Collier and his quartet will unquestionably put their own stamp on this music. In many ways, Collier’s own rapid-fire trajectory – which blends a strong social and political stance with devotional awareness – puts him in an ideal place from which to investigate Coltrane’s far-reaching vision.
There can be no question. From where we stand today, Coltrane’s shadow looms large, embracing modal excursions like ‘My Favourite Things’, political statements like ‘Alabama’, free jazz blow-outs like Ascension, through to the commanding majesty of A Love Supreme. There’s a lot to digest there, and we can expect plenty of surprises – along with powerhouse, incendiary playing – when Collier takes the stage, adrenaline-fueled, ready to take on and re-define the musical legacy of one the indomitable, towering figures of 20th century jazz.
Isaiah Collier plays Birds Basement Thurs 14 – Sat 16 May 2026
https://birdsbasement.com/show/1669/collier-plays-coltrane