Colin Stetson

Whether he’s working on his own music or serving the creative visions of major figures throughout the worlds of music and film, Colin Stetson’s command of the saxophone and other reed instruments as a player is matched only by his versatility as a composer. Born in 1975 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Stetson studied music and began his career in Michigan before relocating to San Francisco with his jazz group Transmission Trio. That led to gigs playing sax for Tom Waits and Mike Patton. After moving to Montreal in 2007, Stetson became a regular collaborator with Arcade Fire while continuing to contribute to music by such acts as Animal Collective and Bon Iver. On solo releases, like the three-part trilogy that began with 2008’s New History Warfare, Vol. 1, Stetson drew from free jazz, experimental classical and post-rock to create the kind of powerful and evocative music that inevitably elicited the attention of filmmakers. Sure enough, Stetson’s growling, menacing sounds became an indispensable element of the 2018 horror hit Hereditary and many other films he has scored.