Jon Batiste - Beethoven Blues: Batiste Piano Series, Vol. 1
(Verve Records, 2024)
This is a magnificent artistic chance taken by a creative firebrand intent on destroying ontological barriers. There are so many ways for a project like this to go sideways, but not in the hands of Jon Batiste. Best known for leading the house band for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert from 2015 to 2022, Batiste is the enfant terrible of the New Orleans music family that also includes Harold Battiste (1931–2015), Alvin Batiste (1932–2007), Lionel Batiste (1931–2012), and Russell Batiste Jr. (1965–2023). The documentary film, American Symphony, recently featured Batiste composing his first symphony. In 2024, Batiste featured in the ensemble comedy-drama film Saturday Night, directed by Jason Reitman, playing the role of musician Billy Preston, as well as composing the film's score.1
Batiste follows his 2023 World Music Radio (Verve Interscope) with Beethoven Blues: Batiste Piano Series, Vol. 1, demonstrating his thorough command of the piano he plays, the music he performs, and the fertile imagination he possesses. Batiste chooses only readily recognisable compositions to riff on. The immediately recognisable miniature Für Elise opens and closes the collection — 20 minutes of hyper-distilled musical vision not likely forgotten. The Fifth Symphony bubbles up throughout the recital, once as a stomp, once as a Congo Square, and quotations left and right.
The pianist dismantles the “Moonlight” piano sonata on “Moonlight Sonata Blues” and “Dusklight Movement.” Batiste nods to his own American Symphony, as well as the Allegretto from the Seventh Symphony and the last movement of the Ninth. Where Batiste shoots the stars is on “Waldstein Wobble,” (based on the Piano Sonata No. 21, in C major, Op. 53) where he plays the history of American pianism in 4:28. This piece alone makes any volume of the Batiste Piano Series a must listen. What next?
(2008, April 12). American musician. Wikipedia.org; Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Batiste#Studio_albums