The Story
Jacob Collier started posting homemade videos in 2011 — split-screen arrangements where he sang and played every part of a song's harmony himself. A cover of Stevie Wonder's 'Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing' caught the attention of Quincy Jones, who reached out and brought the then-19-year-old to the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2014.
In My Room (2016) formalized that one-man-orchestra method into a debut album, all of it built the same way: every instrument and vocal part performed and layered by Collier alone. The Djesse series that followed — four volumes released between 2018 and 2024 — expanded outward instead, filling records with collaborators across jazz, folk, gospel and pop.
Collier has won 7 Grammy Awards from 16 nominations, nearly all of them in the arranging categories — Best Arrangement, Instruments and Vocals, and Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella — a level of recognition in that specific, technical corner of the awards matched by almost no one his age. He was also nominated alongside Coldplay as a credited arranger on their Album of the Year-nominated Music of the Spheres.
He studied at the Purcell School for Young Musicians and the Royal Academy of Music, and still performs with the same instinct that made those early bedroom videos work: treating harmony like something to play with, not just follow.
