Jane Cornwell It’s been 10 years since the release of “In My Room”, 12 years since your multi screen take on “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing” went viral, how has your relationship with your music and your audience changed in that time?

Jacob Collier  Oh, hugely. So I began my process at home in London, working in quite a solitary way. I’d make things by myself. I’d really craft them, I’d really organise things, and I never really imagined even playing shows like touring or anything like that. It was such an insular world. I think the biggest change in the last 12 years has been, in a sense, me leaving that world and building outwards into the real world and being drastically collaborative as opposed to individual. So the last album I put out had over 100,000 people on it. It’s a huge, huge piece of work that’s made of the love I have for the world outside of that original cocoon, but still anchored in that original space. So in many ways, lots has changed, and in many ways nothing much has changed at all. 

Jane Cornwell It’s kind of amazing to think of you in your bedroom doing all those different components, and then seeing you do your audience choirs. Do they ever go wrong? 

Jacob Collier There’s not really such a thing as wrong. I mean, sometimes things don’t go to plan. Sometimes those are the best audience choirs, when something happens that’s unexpected, but you know, some audiences are more in tune than others, so if an audience is really listening, and it’s a really quiet environment, and you can go places, there are extremely special musical things you can find there. But people love to sing, and everyone’s got a voice, and every voice is valid and important. And amazing things happen when voices collide. 

Jane Cornwell Does it vary according to what country you’re in? Someone was saying to me, maybe English audiences are just really much more into harmonising – there’s a kind of folk tradition there.

Jacob Collier  There is, I mean, I would honestly say I’ve been pretty blown away at how universal it is. I’ve conducted audience choirs in South America and India and Australia and across Asia; and it’s pretty astounding how people have this interior desire. There’s this understanding of music, there’s an amount that it makes sense to you. And then I think that there are cultural variations on, you know, major and minor and how they end up feeling, but the foundations of major and minor are for everyone. 

Jane Cornwell  You have this very special relationship with your fans. Tell me about your younger fans and how you work with them, and what kind of questions are you getting from them? 

Jacob Collier  So one of the things I’m most proud of at my concerts is just the range of ages. It’s crazy, like you’ll have a 95 year old and a five year old. I think younger audiences are looking for ways to tell stories that feel fresh and new. You know the idea of just telling a story only through recorded music, or only through visual media, or making a film or writing a book and all these things, they’re all merging together. 

And I think that those young people, those young musicians, they’re ravenous for new ways of really making connection and building community, which are two things that will always be necessary for humans. They’ll never go away. They’ll change their forms. But I think there’s an era that I feel like is coming to an end, which is about being digital in silo, and I’m seeing things break apart, and I’m seeing people love real life experiences in whole new ways. I think actually, since covid, people are really looking into each other and really engaged with each other in different ways. 

And you know, some of my very musical young fans are like, hey, how do you figure this chord out, this chord and this chord, this chord? And some of my older fans are asking questions more about how to connect and how communities are made, and more about my family, my mother, who’s so important to me, and my sisters and all of that. But I think the thing with music is there’s something for everyone. If you provide enough access points for people, then people really feel like it’s for them. 

Jane Cornwell  The confidence factor in terms of the guests you have on Djesse – from Brandi Carlile to Willow Smith. Did you make a wish list and think, I’m just gonna ask everybody and see what happens? 

Jacob Collier  Kind of yeah. I thought, you know, one of the things I’ve always loved most about music and just creativity in general is just like the art of colliding things together. So you take Shawn Mendes and Stormzy, for example, and throw them together. And actually, that song has Kirk Franklin on it – he’s a massive gospel legend. 

Musically speaking, it just makes me really happy. And I did, I made a massive list of people, and then I thought, well, you and you would be crazy, and you and you would be crazy, but a lot of the things happen organically. You have a session with one person, and then another person. You think, oh, these ideas are actually compatible. And then one of the things I love the most about those kinds of communities is that when I put two people together and then they become friends and make things of their own right? I think that’s amazing. 

Jane Cornwell  Djesse, you finished the series. What’s next? 

Jacob Collier  I haven’t really decided yet, but one thing that is becoming apparent to me is that I can’t really top Djesse in terms of the quantity of musicians, I’m not going to do more than 100,000 – that would be insane. So what I’d really like to do for a challenge, is to really zone in on one instrument and really understand that one instrument in its entirety. And I don’t know what the instrument will be, maybe it’s the five string guitar, maybe it’s the piano, but I think at some point soon, I’d like to really dive in and unlock that, because you can get infinity out of infinity, but you can also get infinity out of something really small, so I think I’m excited to try and do that next. Maybe. 

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Jane Cornwell is an Australian-born, London-based writer on arts, travel and music for publications and platforms in the UK and Australia, including Songlines and Jazzwise. She’s the former jazz critic of the London Evening Standard.

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_{Header image: Jacob Collier. Photo: Shervin Lainez.}