Onyx Collective is a New York City jazz ensemble founded in 2014 by saxophonist Isaiah Barr. Barr grew up on the Lower East Side and took the band name from a prewar block of houses in the East Village where his uncle, the H.I.V./AIDS activist David Barr, lived for many years.

The collective came together through Know-Wave, Aaron Bondaroff’s radio-show-cum-downtown-community. When Barr was offered his own time slot, he called up other musicians to play live from Know-Wave’s East Village outpost. Sometimes they formed a trio; at others a seven-piece ecosystem of experimental sound.

After high school, Mr. Barr met Austin Williamson and Josh Benitez in a jazz program at York College in Queens. Both of them became regular members of Onyx Collective.

Barr is also joined by David Frazier on drums, Julius Rodriguez and Isaac Sleator on keyboard, Jack Guliemetti on guitar, Felix Pastorius, Spencer Murphy, Malik Mclaurine and Paul Johnson on electric bass, Dean Torrey and Walter Stinson on upright bass, Keefe Martin and Adam O'farrill on trumpet, and Roy Nathanson on sax. Maxwell Deter provides most of Onyx Collective’s visual art. There is an additional group of artists who consistently orbit in and out of the Onyx universe. Nick Hakim, Julian Soto, Devonté Hynes, Wiki, Salomon Faye, and other New York mainstays have performed with the band, and Onyx quietly features on a bevy of other artists' records.

The group can feature as many as a dozen people onstage at a time, but its core includes the saxophonist Isaiah Barr, the drummer Austin Williamson, the keyboardist Josh Benitez and the singer Julian Soto.

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