Romain Collin is a Grammy-nominated pianist who has been praised by NPR as a "visionary composer" and hailed by the Boston Globe as one of the "leading lights of a new breed of jazz players." The NY-based, French- American musician has developed “a highly personal and contemporary vision” (A Blog Supreme, NPR), a style “unique and engaging without obvious influences” (All About Jazz) that seamlessly blends improvisation, electronic sound design, indie rock, and film scoring.

Collin's upcoming release, DUST (E2/ Edition ‘25) is an intimate solo piano album accompanied by a series of short films directed by Matthew Palmer, that will be exhibited in contemporary art galleries in the US and Europe. This album will offer a stark departure from his previous progressive electric crossover record, Tiny Lights... (XM, 2019), which has been celebrated as "a unique voice, a crystal clear vision" by UK VIBE. This project was followed this up with a full-length album of remixes, Tiny Lights... RMXS (2021). It was accompanied by a long-form music video, SHE, created by Collin in collaboration with Matthew Palmer, choreographer and dancer Alina Fatieieva, and lauded fashion designer Alexander Chen. SHE was selected for the Canada International Fashion Film Festival and the Istanbul Fashion Film Festival (2020), and was screened at the DeYoung museum in San Francisco.

In 2022, Collin also founded FOSS, a project that combines original electro-pop music with breathtaking visuals. FOSS has performed at Burning Man's famed Robot Heart, at Catharsis in collaboration with digital artist Refik Anadol and visionary architect Arthur Mamou-Mani, at the Shed for the Sonic Sphere, as well as at various contemporary art galleries and other cutting-edge performing arts venues. To accompany the project, Collin directed the feature film FOSS: Shapeless (2023), which won Best Experimental Film at the Golden Lion International Film Festival and made the official selection at the Future Contingents Film Festival.

Collin is a co-leader of several critically acclaimed projects, among them a group with harmonica virtuoso Gregoire Maret and guitarist Bill Frisell, which released Americana (ACT, 2019) and earned a Grammy® nomination for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album. Collin followed up his collaboration with Maret with Ennio (ACT, 2024), “an emotional, ecstatic” (The Guardian) tribute to the great film composer Ennio Morricone which features guests Cassandra Wilson and Gregory Porter. Collin has released two duo records with singer Sachal Vasandani, Midnight Shelter (Edition, 2021) and Still Life (Edition, 2022), which have been praised by RadioFrance as “music that speaks with emotion and feeling, that does not allow virtuosity to take precedence over the meaning, expression and feeling of the song”. Collin is set to release a couple of duo records in collaboration with Björk’s longtime engineer and music director, Bergur Thorisson.

Read Full Bio