PHOTO BY DOUG MASON
BY KEVIN MICHAELS
THE MAN WITH JAZZ iN HIS SOUL
JON BATISTE HAS ANY NEW ORLEANS MUSICIAN EVER AMASSED AS MANY ACCOLADES IN A SINGLE YEAR AS JON BATISTE? In the past 12 months, the multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter won an Academy Award for his score to the animated film “Soul.” He also earned more nominations—a total of 11—than any other artist during the 64th annual Grammy Awards. He ended up winning five Grammys, including the prestigious Album of the Year award for his 2021 release “We Are,” a career-defining work that underscored his myriad influences, insights and inspirational intentions. He created “We Are” even as he maintained a busy schedule as the bandleader on the CBS late-night talk show “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and took an active role in social justice movements. His involvement was an extension of his “love riot” musical marches in New York, which in turn were a twist on New Orleans’ second-line parade tradition. All that and more made Batiste a worthy subject for the 2022 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival’s commemorative poster. Rendered by veteran Jazz Fest poster artist Terrance Osborne—like Batiste, an alumnus of the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts—the poster captures Batiste’s sense of joy and positive spirit while celebrating his New Orleans pedigree. Batiste has appeared on Jazz Fest stages since he was a teenager. He is not scheduled to perform at the 2022 festival, with good reason: his newly commissioned “American Symphony” is slated to make its world premiere at New York’s Carnegie Hall on May 7, the second Saturday of Jazz Fest. “American Symphony” is described as Batiste’s “latest opus, a culmination of more than a century of Black brilliance at Carnegie Hall. In American Symphony, the Oscar-winning composer salutes musical visionaries, such as Duke Ellington, James Reese Europe, Mahalia Jackson, and Nina Simone, who once stood on (this) very stage.” Preparing for the “American Symphony” premiere, which was postponed from the previous fall because of the coronavirus pandemic, left no time to travel to the New Orleans for the 2022 Jazz Fest. But thanks to Osborne’s celebratory street parade of a poster, Batiste is well-represented.
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Jazz Fest 2022 | Presented by Shell
Jonathan Batiste was born into a multi-generational family of musicians, a phenomenon that is not uncommon in New Orleans. But even for New Orleans, the number of musicians in the extended Batiste family is exceptional. Jonathan’s father Michael, a bassist, was one of seven brothers. Together, they formed the Batiste Brothers Band, purveyors of New Orleans funk and soul. Going back further, members of the Batiste family populated traditional New Orleans brass bands. Jon also counts more than two-dozen cousins who are musicians. Given that lineage, his musicality was perhaps inevitable. As a boy, he played percussion with the Batiste Brothers Band, then gravitated to the keyboards. Early on, he exhibited an ability to play music by ear—he could listen to a piece once, then recreate it almost note-for-note on the piano. But his parents believed he also needed formal instruction. At age 10, he started taking classical piano lessons from renowned music teacher Shirley Herstein. She recognized Batiste’s prodigious talent “immediately.” To come across such a student, she said, “is like a dream. It’s so rare you get somebody like that.” For seven years, up until he graduated from high school and moved to New York, Batiste took lessons from “Miss Shirley” on Saturdays. She augmented his natural abilities with the discipline required to read music. “When I would give him a new piece, he used to say, ‘Play it for me.’ I wouldn’t let him do that. I got him out of that habit as quickly as I could. No shortcuts. You’re going to figure it out and play it for me.” He did figure it out. By the time he left for New York, he was fluent in both classical music and jazz. That his time with Herstein was crucial to his artistic development was not lost on him. Years later, during his Oscars acceptance speech, he gave a shout-out to “Miss Shirley,” who was then in her 80s. His private lessons were only one component of his musical formative years. His parents escorted him to music clubs to hear local masters at work. He performed with mentor, modern jazz clarinetist and distant relative Alvin Batiste’s Jazztronauts. Though he lived across the Jefferson Parish line in Kenner, he attended New Orleans’ St. Augustine
