It’s time for my annual Jacob Collier post.
Multi-instrumentalist, creative, and kind musician Jacob Collier is someone I greatly admire. His musical skills amaze me, but in addition — or maybe all the more — I love the ways he brings people together, and I love the values he shares. He just seems very alive, and that inspires my own sense of aliveness.
I try to make sure I see him in concert once a year. There’s no one else I do that for. But over these last few years, one of my very favorite things has been treating people to tickets to come alongside me and experience these concerts, too.
Jacob Collier’s live concerts are unlike any other context I’ve ever been in. They are a masterclass in collective effervescence — that feeling of awe and magic that can come over a crowd of people when they feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves.
He gets everyone participating in the music and creating it alongside him. He’s highly improvisational and full of energy, and quite simply, there is no Jacob Collier concert without the audience. The people gathered aren’t simply watching the experience. They’re helping create it.
I’ve loved bringing friends alongside me so they can experience this, too. And it makes me think that when we know something special, there’s something touching and meaningful and even intimate about bringing other people to that gift.
Sometimes we have the opportunity to point not only to something or someone we love, but to an experience, and then widen that experience by inviting other people to add themselves to it.
That’s what it’s been like to take my friends to these concerts.
So what about you? What invigorates you? Have you shared your joy with anyone else? Have you invited someone into it?
—Renee Roederer
