Composer, improviser, and multi-instrumentalist Colin Stetson has earned recognition for an intense engagement with the saxophone, especially its bass variant, as well as the bass clarinet. A whale-like timbre, circular breathing, and a signature physical method of producing sound from the instrument’s finger pads generate melodic and rhythmic pulses within boundless exploratory terrain. In performance he holds listeners through resourceful rhythms and wide-ranging harmonic textures without recourse to digital delay or overdubs. His collaborators have ranged from Arcade Fire and Tom Waits to Anthony Braxton and Bon Iver. Although early recordings found him fronting small ensembles, it was the solo saxophone music—developed through circular breathing, tongue slaps, and an array of unconventional fingering methods—captured on New History Warfare, Vols. 1-3 for Constellation that prompted critics to assert he had forged a genre of his own. Beyond these solo projects he has issued joint releases such as 2012’s Stones with Mats Gustafsson and the 2015 album Never Were the Way She Was with Arcade Fire violinist Sarah Neufeld. He has also composed for cinema, supplying scores for the horror features Hereditary in 2018, Color Out of Space in 2020, and The Menu in 2022. The year 2023 brought When We Were That What Wept for the Sea. Two further scores appeared in 2024: Uzumaki for an anime series and Hold Your Breath for a horror film. That same year Stetson released the solo album The Love It Took to Leave You.
Born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Stetson gained command of various saxophones, clarinet, and flute while attending the city’s public schools. He received a music degree from the University of Michigan in 1997 after studying with Roscoe Mitchell, Donald Sinta, and Christopher Creviston, then pursued additional instruction with Steve Adams and Henry Threadgill. During college he co-founded Transmission, later known as Transmission Trio, and in 1998 joined progressive Detroit-area jazz-rock outfit Larval for their Knitting Factory album Larval 2. That summer he relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area with the rest of Transmission, whose debut album appeared in 1999.
Stetson further explored chamber-jazz territory with the People’s Bizarre, whose sound drew on Eastern European folk traditions, and with Connector, a project fusing acoustic and electronic elements. He performed live alongside Fred Frith, Peter Kowald, Ned Rothenberg, and Kenny Wollesen while maintaining ties to the Detroit and Ann Arbor scenes. Prior to the move west he had contributed to friend Recloose’s debut EP on Planet E, a partnership that continued and led to the DJ’s widely praised 2002 full-length Cardiology. Also in 2002 Tom Waits enlisted Stetson for reed parts on the albums Alice and Blood Money, an association that brought substantial visibility and a live appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman. A limited-edition 3" CD documented a 2002 performance at Oakland’s Artship, and his first leader date, the quintet recording Slow Descent, arrived in summer 2003.
Stetson settled in Montreal, Quebec, in 2007; the following year he issued the largely solo saxophone album New History Warfare, Vol. 1. He returned in 2011 with New History Warfare, Vol. 2: Judges, which incorporated spoken-word passages from avant-garde vocalist Laurie Anderson, and later that year released the EP Those Who Didn’t Run. Touring stints with Arcade Fire and Bell Orchestre followed, as did recording sessions with numerous artists including Anthony Braxton and Bon Iver. In 2013 he delivered New History Warfare, Vol. 3: To See More Light; the sole overdubs consisted of guest vocals from Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. He also appeared on Arcade Fire’s Reflektor. The next year Stetson contributed to “Dreaming Awake,” the opening track of My Brightest Diamond’s None More Than You EP, and to Timber Timbre’s Hot Dreams. In 2015 he and violinist Sarah Neufeld, another Constellation artist and Arcade Fire member, recorded the live-in-the-studio duets album Never Were the Way She Was, issued that spring.
While maintaining an active schedule as sideman, touring musician, and solo performer, Stetson next pursued a long-held ambition to reinterpret Polish composer Henryk Górecki’s celebrated Symphony No. 3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs). Treating the piece as a pivotal work in his own development, he employed altered instrumentation—electric guitars, winds, an orchestral string section, rock drums, and electronics. Participants included Neufeld, Liturgy’s Greg Fox, Esmerine’s Rebecca Foon, saxophonist Matt Bauder, and mezzo-soprano Megan Stetson, the composer’s sister. The approach merged his classical and improvisational roots with influences from black metal and electronic music. Released by 52hz in spring 2016 as Sorrow: A Reimagining of Górecki’s 3rd Symphony, the album received unanimous international praise; subsequent tours drew sold-out houses and enthusiastic notices. He also assembled the blackened doom-metal band EX EYE with Fox, Shahzad Ismaily, and Toby Summerfield.
In February 2017 Stetson announced the solo album All This I Do for Glory, which the artist described as offering “a reasoning and exploration of the machinations of ambition and legacy, an examination of the concepts of afterlife, and the first half of a doomed love story in the model of the Greek tragedies.” Its inspirations included Aphex Twin and Autechre for their percussive strategies and Enya’s Shepherd Moons for microphone placement techniques that permitted “venting”—a deliberate opening at the sides of the mouth to release air and generate additional sound. The record appeared in April, followed later that year by a self-titled full-length and an accompanying tour. Afterward, film director Ari Aster approached Stetson to score the horror feature Hereditary, requesting only that the music “sound evil.” Gathering an array of reed, woodwind, and brass instruments, some of which he modified, Stetson lowered the pitch of bass clarinets to foreground woodwind material and abstracted timbres to evoke locations and characters. He cited the influence of the late Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, the duo Autechre, and the sound of swarming bats. Milan issued Hereditary in late spring 2018.
Before year’s end Stetson also released the digital-only score for the sci-fi series The First. He composed and recorded the soundtrack for Richard Stanley’s cinematic adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s Color Out of Space, starring Nicolas Cage; Milan issued that album in February 2020. Later in 2020 he supplied music for the series Barkskins and Deliver Us and the film The War Show. The 2021 soundtrack Blue Caprice, a collaboration with Neufeld, appeared alongside La Peur and Mayday. In 2022 Stetson scored the Netflix film Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the Disney+ production Among the Stars. His drone album Chimæra I came out on the Australian label Room40, and he provided the score for the horror-comedy The Menu.
The following year brought additional scoring assignments and the release of When We Were That What Wept for the Sea, his longest album to date, featuring vocal contributions from Celtic Sound System’s Iarla Ó Lionáird, Scottish smallpiper Brighde Chaimbeul, and longtime friend and fellow Ann Arbor native Toby Summerfield on guitars and strings. Stetson remained active in 2024. He issued Uzumaki, an original score for the anime series drawn from Junji Ito’s horror manga, and Hold Your Breath, a horror-film soundtrack by Karrie Crouse and Will Joines, released by Milan Music. He also delivered The Love It Took to Leave You, his first entirely solo album since 2017.
