ISAIAH COLLIER — Isaiah Collier & the Chosen Few : The Almighty (review)

ISAIAH COLLIER — Isaiah Collier & the Chosen Few : The Almighty album cover Album · 2024 · 21st Century Modern Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
snobb
Five years ago I noticed a (virtually unknown at the time) young American jazz artist playing a gig during a jazz fest in a small provincial town in Samogitia, where every foreign artist was a real rarity. He sounded like the time machine transferred him there right from late 60s America, and it was quite unusual and interesting. This musician was sax player Isaiah Collier.

Now, after a few albums released and a lot of gigs played all around the globe, Isaiah is not a jazz world's "dark horse" anymore. His just released album, "The Almighty", is obviously noticed by media and listeners. What Isaiah offers on his new release is in fact a continuation of his earliest work. Emotively colored, richly arranged spiritual jazz, more precisely - a jazz suite performed by Collier's quartet with the help of a whole small orchestra on some pieces.

The album's music sounds exactly as one can expect from Collier - strongly influenced by Pharoah Sanders/Alice Coltrane works from the late 60s-early 70s, without even a trace of more current decades influence. To be precise, it is important to mention there is a stronger attention on composition in this album's music.

Just five longish songs, lasting more that one hour, all are tuneful, soulful and well played and arranged. Depending on the listener's taste, one can enjoy almost authentically re-vitalized sound and atmosphere of half-a-century old spiritual jazz, or miss some of nowadays musical elements in it. Same way, for some, the whole album can sound a bit bombastic, but then it fits well under the late 60s genre standards.

All in all, it's an interesting work of a rising artist who continues going his own way.
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