Musician And Composer Jon Batiste On How Forward Motion And Faith Marked His Career-Defining Year

2022 was a remarkable year for celebrated musician and composer Jon Batiste.

The band leader of seven years for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert received a historic 11 Grammy nominations and won in five of the categories for which he was nominated, including Album of the Year. He also embarked on his most ambitious creation to date — composing an original symphony — the process of which is the subject of the recent Netflix documentary American Symphony.

As if enough wasn't on his plate, in the midst of his professionally triumphant year his long-time partner — bestselling author Suleika Jaouad — learned that her long-dormant cancer has returned.

"We met when we were kids in band camp ... we didn't know if she was going to make it through this when the [film] was being captured," Batiste told LAist's Larry Mantle in a recent interview on Mantle's daily program AirTalk, which airs on 89.3 FM. "We didn't think of it as a forgone conclusion that this would be a happy ending."

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Matthew Heineman's documentary "American Symphony" chronicles a year of incredible highs and devastating lows in the lives of Suleika Jaouad, left, and Jon Batiste, right.

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Batiste said it was hard to navigate the stress that Jaouad's diagnosis had on him amid everything else that was going on — the career highs of his Grammy nominations and wins and the work on his symphony, which he said was the "culmination of everything I've ever worked on and everything I've ever studied."

"It was all happening at the peak of the axis on every category of my life. I didn't really understand how to process it in the moment except for forward motion and faith."

The musical stew of New Orleans

Jon Batiste has recorded with some of the biggest names in music — Stevie Wonder, Willie Nelson, Lana Del Rey, Prince and many more. Batiste says his ability to work with such a range of artists across different genres goes back to his upbringing in the musical stew of New Orleans.

"I was so fortunate to grow up ... where there was no shortage of characters and musical history. It's a very, very special cultural inheritance."

Batiste's father is a musician, as are his uncles. And that's to say nothing of his more than 30 cousins with musical backgrounds, some professionals and many just musically inclined. He said the atmosphere of his youth was ripe for creativity and the prevailing belief was that you could make music out of anything.

"I grew up around a lot of avant-garde musicians. These are musicians who would play styles of music where there would be no specific tune or melody. It would just be experimental."

Batiste recalled watching musicians play the strings of a piano with a mallet or playing the hinge of a squeaky door. This foundation allowed him the freedom to experiment and excel at his craft, ultimately landing him at Juilliard.

"I'm a bit of a mix of educational styles, different pedagogies if you will," he said. "The pedagogy of the high institutions of Juilliard, the high arts of the greatest institutions in the world. But I'm also from the institution of the street. That's a beautiful thing to have those worlds and everything in between to create your own style."

Treading new ground and exposing listeners to new sounds is are guiding principles in Batiste's career.

"I don't believe in genre; I believe in culture and tradition."

Standing on the shoulders of 'the greats'

As a commercial artist, Batiste has enjoyed the perks of popular success. But as someone driven by his own musical instinct, he also recognized the need to push himself to the highest level of his craft. Much in the same way he can move between the pedagogies of higher education and the education of the streets, he can also move between what is familiar and what is foreign.

"The real truth of it is, you have to always lead with humility. It's just always about remembering this is a service. We're in a service position. We're serving people out there with music, with art, with creativity that enriches their lives."

Batiste often reflects on all the shoulders he's standing on — the greats of jazz, soul and classical musicians, some of whom are widely known like Miles Davis, and many who have gone unnoticed and never got their due recognition. Batiste said this legacy isn't one that necessarily weighs on him but instead, propels him forward.

The symphony comes to life

Just as there was no roadmap for his wife's illness, Batiste had no blueprint for the symphonic dream he was about to envision from the ground up.

"It's not a typical symphony orchestra. I hand-selected each musician because each song, each movement, each part of this orchestra is about innovating the form and shifting it in a different direction and expanding the cannon ultimately."

The musicians ranged from those who played archaic folk instruments to electronic musicians. The diversity of sound and experience meant Batiste had to find new ways to rehearse and perform with his chosen members.

Jon Batiste takes notes atop his piano in this still from the Netflix documentary "American Symphony"

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Finally, on Sept. 22, 2022 Batiste walked out before an audience at Carnegie Hall in New York City. The anticipation of the performance was heighted by three COVID-related postponements. But the payoff was, as Batiste put it, "transcendent."

"This moment that you see, when I sit at the piano and you first hear the theme ... I'm floating. There's nothing that I can say to describe the emotion of reaching this point and all that it means for the culture and for our family. It's indescribable to me. It makes me tear up."

Batiste says performing at Carnegie Hall was especially meaningful.

"There's something that is carried on when you inhabit the spaces of the greats of humanity, your ancestry, where they created the art and architected the future that we now inherit from them."

Batiste described it as a kind of transference, one that happens without words of description, but through a sense-memory that is simply passed on.

To have his wife in the audience made the moment all the more powerful for Batiste. Today, Jaouad is "doing as well as we could hope," Batiste said.

Musician Jon Batiste playing the piano in this still from the Netflix documentary "American Symphony."

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Courtesy Netflix

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American Symphony is available to stream on Netflix.

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