Jacob Collier Live at The Anthem with Lindsey Lomis

“There’s musicianship and then there’s genius, and then way, way, way above all that, out in the stratosphere, is Jacob Collier.”

I was very blessed this past week to have attended my first Jacob Collier concert at The Anthem in Washington DC, for the Djesse World Tour 2024, where he was accompanied by the talented angelic-voiced Lindsey Lomis, following the release of Jacob’s Djesse Volume 4, the fourth installment of a project started by Jacob in the middle of the 2020 Covid pandemic, while the world was shut down. For Jacob, however, this was only the beginning.

Jacob is a 29 year old, six time Grammy award winner (nominated 12 times), producer, multi-instrumentalist (playing every instrument from piano, to guitar, bass guitar, drums, melodica, mandolin, ukulele, harpejji, and more), as well as being a world class composer. He is also my favorite musical artist, so seeing him live was a dream-come-true.

Jacob frequently infuses elements of jazz, a cappella, electronic, rock, classical, and more into his very unique sound. Jacob has an astounding range of four octaves, and is also able to divide an interval into an any number of units and sing them accurately because he also has perfect pitch. He can additionally recognize micro-tones which are intervals smaller than a semitone (basically the pitches between the cracks of two piano keys) which has resulted in mind-blowing musical creation. What makes him even more impressive is the fact that he is an autodidact–completely self-taught.

One of my literary heroes, C.S. Lewis, once said that by reading the fantasy author George MacDonald, it was like his imagination was baptized. For me, attending this incredible concert was like having my musical senses baptized. No joke.

The concert recording I’ve attached here doesn’t do the almost religious experience justice, so I am also including a YouTube link to a professionally captured spectacular, Tiny Desk performance, but nothing compares to attending live, so if you ever get a chance to see/hear him live, GO!