Isaiah Collier doesn’t much want to talk about his past projects. Sitting in the backroom of Robust Coffee Lounge in Woodlawn, the 26-year-old multi-instrumentalist and composer instead seems to relish discussing everything else: how a bandleader is like an architect; why artists must balance humility and pride; how music “forces us to be honest even if we want to be dishonest.”

The prolific Collier is, of course, referring to his projects with that last remark. In 2024, he released two acclaimed jazz albums, The Almighty and The World Is on Fire, that are as honest — and ambitious — as their titles. And in December, the DuSable Black History Museum premiered Collier’s The Story of 400 Years, a 13-movement suite incorporating dance and visual media that traces the history and impact of Black American music. Both albums featured his longtime band, the Chosen Few, who will join him in concert March 11 at the Harris Theater.

Collier’s saxophone playing — particularly on The World Is on Fire, released two weeks before the presidential election — is by turns confrontational and plaintive. He packs his compositions full of urgent fury, as in the final and best track, “We Don’t Even Know Where We’re Headed.” You can feel a world engulfed in flames before finding a beautiful and graceful, if uncertain, resolution.

This January afternoon, Collier sports a baseball hat, a black-and-white cravat, and a navy corduroy jacket. (The rings he wears on every finger, in varying degrees of ornateness, are the only sartorial nod to his spiritual jazz leanings.) In conversation, he’s quick to laugh — but he’s deadly serious on the topic of artists’ responsibilities during fraught times. “I need to make sure that the artists around me are seeing the state of the world,” he says, “and are also acknowledging that this is not just making a song. January 6 happened. Nobody said shit. The last time I heard a significant piece from an artist in the jazz community, it came from [saxophonist] Jimmy Greene. His daughter was one of the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre. How many other situations have we heard throughout the years that happened and nobody said nothing?”

Gradually, Collier unspools details of his own life. The middle of three sons raised by musician parents, he grew up in Park Manor and Englewood, learning piano around age 5 and sax at 11, thanks in part to early music education at the nearby Salvation Army community center. By 13, Collier was playing R&B at South Side clubs with his parents, who painted a shadow mustache on him to make him look older so that he didn’t have to sit in the car between sets.

Collier attended the Chicago High School for the Arts in West Town while also training at the nonprofit Jazz Institute of Chicago. He then went on to study classical saxophone at the now-defunct Brubeck Institute at the University of the Pacific in Northern California. Collier, who currently splits his time between Chicago and New York City, began composing at a furious pace while out west, beginning to shape many of the ideas he’s recorded these past few years.

But to hear Collier tell it, this first fertile phase of his career — which includes playing jazz fests in Berlin and Paris and performing at the U.S. embassy in Paraguay — has reached an end. His gig at the Harris might be his last with the Chosen Few: Four days later, on March 15, at Dorian’s Through the Record Shop in Wicker Park, he’ll play with the Gemini Project, a jazz, R&B, and rock fusion band he formed with his younger brother, Jeremiah.

“I’m trying to hear new options,” Collier says. “I feel like I’ve done a lot, but also know I’ve done so little. I’m at a bit of a brick wall — but the wall for me now is the new direction. Sometimes you hit a wall, you’ve also got to bring a hammer with you. And so when this happens, it means a breakthrough.”