Audience Choir Of The ‘Twistable Turnable Man’ – Jacob Collier
One extremely positive realization – People haven’t forgotten how is it to make music or sing together. A great proof of this is Jacob Collier and his Audience Choir.
It is an undeniable fact, that what the 30 years old British musician Jacob Collier has already accomplished, is a very unique phenomenon. He is a true musical genius, comparable with, among others, J. S. Bach, W. A. Mozart, Freddie Mercury, or Prince. Just for an illustration – in 2025 he got his seventh (7 !!!) Grammy Award.
Raised in a musical family, he became known through recording himself in his tiny room in London, and posting these recording on YouTube. His pristine musical talent got quickly recognized and under the tutorship of none other than the superstar-maker Quincy Jones, his fame has been growing to the stratosphere. Unlike many other comparable music stars, Jacob keeps his child-like spark and truthfulness.
I have been aware of his talent for some time. What has recently caught my attention, was his musical work with the live audience, which has literally materialized in a compilation of samples released by the company Native Instruments under the name Audience Choir. It is a one-of-a-kind choir plugin for a digital audio workstation, that can be downloaded for free from the company’s website, and used to compose your own computer music, employing voices of thousands singers captured from different cities all over the world. Simply put — anyone can now “conduct their own choir” and play with sounds of the Audience Choir, by playing on a digital keyboard connected to a computer. Here is an analysis How it actually works.
What is way more surprising for me is the simple fact that something like this has been actually done. Not that I want to compare myself with Jacob, but from my recent experience working with adults in a corporate setting, using music to help teams and organizations work better, it had been extremely difficult to make participants to open their mouths and sing.
Jacob’s joy while making music, his cheerfulness, bravado conducting thousands of singers in the audience, his talent and mastery … are contagious. No surprise, that everyone enjoys to participate.
While searching for more information about Jacob, the YouTube algorithm brought up a very interesting podcast. It is by an American author and inspirational speaker on business leadership Simon Sinek, who had a chance to experience Jacob Collier in an hour long discussion in LA, after the recent Grammy Award Ceremony. There are probably very few similarly suitable discussion partners about creativity like these two guys.
I am sure that everyone, whose musical activity goes at least a step further beyond just pushing the On/Off button on a radio, will enjoy listening to the discussion and also to music examples played on a piano by Jacob. They both agreed on the fact, that “Music is in us, even if we don’t know how to facilitate to get it out of us.” What also makes Jacob unique is his great ability to get beautiful music from himself, and also from the audience coming to his concerts. As he pointed out “We are all instruments”.
If you are a bit confused about the title of this post, originally it came from Simon who got clearly inspired by Jacob and his personality. He stated that “Everybody has moments of inspiration – what everybody is not doing is capturing them. And maybe the artist is the one who learns to catch it to capture them.” To illustrate his point, he started reading a poem by Shel Silverstein Twistable Turnable Man and I think it is one of the best portrayal of Jacob Collier words can offer. Here it is:
Twistable Turnable Man
He’s the Twistable Turnable Squeezable Pullable
Stretchable Foldable Man.
He can crawl in your pocket or fit your locket
Or screw himself into a twenty-volt socket,
Or stretch himself up to the steeple or taller,
Or squeeze himself into a thimble or smaller,
Yes he can, course he can,
He’s the Twistable Turnable Squeezable Pullable
Stretchable Shrinkable Man.
And he lives a passable life
With his Squeezable Lovable Kissable Hugable
Pullable Tugable Wife.
And they have two twistable kids
Who bend up the way that they did.
And they turn and they stretch
Just as much as they can
For this Bendable Foldable
Do-what-you’re-toldable
Easily moldable
Buy-what you’re-soldable
Washable Mendable
Highly Dependable
Buyable Saleable
Always available
Bounceable Shakeable
Almost unbreakable
Twistable Turnable Man.
*by Shel Silverstein
Photo: screen grab from YouTube
