In May of this year, multi-Grammy, Emmy, and Oscar winner Jon Batiste visited GBH’s Fraser Performance Studio to talk about his upcoming release Black Mozart, which "reimagines the classical tradition through a Black American musical lens." Batiste spoke with CRB's Julia Marcus about the joy of playing Mozart, his unique method of recording the album, and why Mozart's music can be a portal. Listen with the audio player above, and read the transcript below.
TRANSCRIPT:
Julia Marcus: You're hearing a jazz pianist born and raised in Louisiana, a member of a New Orleans musical dynasty.
He became known to a nation as the bandleader for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and serenaded millions at the 2025 Super Bowl with his soulful rendition of the national anthem.
He also studied classical music at the Juilliard School in New York. And now, he's releasing Mozart.
[MUSIC]
This is Mozart's Rondo alla Turca, performed by John Batiste. It's part of his new release titled "Black Mozart," following his 2024 release "Beethoven Blues."
In Batiste's words, "the album reimagines the classical tradition through a Black American musical lens." I spoke with Batiste in GBH's Fraser Performance Studio. He walked in with a huge smile on his face, and once he saw our Steinway D, he couldn't resist. He sat down at the piano and immediately started playing. As he got used to the piano and how it sounded in the room, I asked him if he'd been to Boston before.
Jon Batiste: I came here when I was in junior year of high school for the summer. And I studied at Berklee. Did you ever go to Berklee?
Julia Marcus: I did a Berklee summer camp, yeah!
Jon Batiste: Ah! Which one?
Julia Marcus: It was connected with BoCo at the time, so I was there for just classical singing.
Jon Batiste: Wow, that's so cool!
Julia Marcus: It was fun! [Batiste plays the piano] And you're at Symphony Hall?
Jon Batiste: Yes.
Julia Marcus: Is this your first time at Symphony Hall?
Jon Batiste: My first time. Symphony Hall!
Julia Marcus: What do you think?
Jon Batiste: I love Symphony Hall. It sounds amazing. It's like very pure reverb. You can hear everything that's happening coming back to you as it happened. It's like there's no affect to the reverb. It's very pure. And it resonates, and it's very inspiring. The orchestra is amazing.
Julia Marcus: Right?
Jon Batiste: Oh, wow. Wow.
Julia Marcus: Can you— do you feel like you can hear the audience in that space too?
Jon Batiste: Yes.
Julia Marcus: Like, them responding to you?
Jon Batiste: Definitely.
Julia Marcus: Yeah.
Jon Batiste: Everybody's one.
Julia Marcus: Everybody's one.
Jon Batiste: The oneness of all. [Batiste chuckles]
Julia Marcus: It is an absolute honor to be here with you. I want to talk about Black Mozart.
Jon Batiste: Oh, yeah.
Julia Marcus: You had "Beethoven Blues" come out in 2024.
Jon Batiste: Yes, yes.
Julia Marcus: For an interview for that album, I have a quote from you that I loved.
Jon Batiste: Oh, yeah? Oh, ama— what did I say? [Batiste and Marcus laugh]
Julia Marcus: You said, "It's not that the original wasn't great and transcendent, but it's that a lot has happened since then."
Jon Batiste: Yes. It's so, so beautiful how music is the collective human consciousness and an archive of all the things that we've created since the first drum. And a lot has happened since Ludwig, the vessel of Ludwig van Beethoven. And a lot of music, a lot of creativity, a lot of life formed into sound, forged into songs and compositions and traditions and rituals of music that are connected to the old rituals of music-making that formed these incredible new colors, new expressions, age-old fundamental expressions in humanity, but expressed in a way that they never were before, like the blues, like gospel music and jazz and soul and folk music from all parts of the world. The wonders of that meeting the greatness of what Beethoven or Mozart created is such an amazing artistic opportunity for our generation to kind of continue the thread and be in conversation with it as we add to the continuum of human creativity.
Julia Marcus: Were there different things that you wanted to connect the dots back to Mozart with, then Beethoven?
Jon Batiste: Yes, they're different spirits. Everybody is a spirit that is walking around, and we get these bodies [Batiste chuckles] and we get these contexts of time that we're born into. And I find that, when I listen to music, particularly of music artists, creators, composers that I could never meet, I'm more focused on the spirit of what they are and what they're saying. And that's a deeper way of knowing a person because we are our thoughts and our ideas and our essence. And the bodies just carry that. And the culture is a way of framing it. And we learn from the culture we're born into. But I think about Mozart and his spirit and how there was such a divine symmetry to what he's doing. And the melodies have such a playful quality and there's such a way of articulating his perspective on life. And then, there's so much music.
Julia Marcus: Mm-hmm!
Jon Batiste: There's so many symphonies, so many melodies that have a weight and a gravitas that were well, well beyond his age when he composed them. And it seemed like the music was pouring out of his spirit. It just was coming to him in a very fluid way. And that really feels so connected to the way I feel about Thelonius Monk. And they're, to me, spiritual brothers 200-plus years apart. [Batiste chuckles] They're like two different contexts of culture and time and expression, but the same sort of, they're branches on the same tree. Whereas Beethoven, he understood the balance of form and structure and the way that he built his work would have so much of a fortitude of structure and logic that, obviously Mozart and Monk have, but Beethoven feels like he was putting down all of these containers of human emotion that we hadn't expressed in this way before. He took the form that they created with symphonies and sonatas and found a way to optimize it.
So when I'm playing his music, I'm thinking about how do I address the form and the structure and create other containers of emotion so that the space has this new understanding of how to express itself. How do you express wistfulness? How do you express the depth of optimism and also fear that is found at the core of the blues. 'Cause the blues is how you deal with optimism in the world when you're afraid. When you're lonely. When bad things happen. And that's connected to the way that Beethoven's music addressed that form of the emotion the way he understood it in his time through the form that he had. So just now thinking, oh, how do I bring the 12-bar blues form, or a form of the blues, the minor blues, into some of his works that were structured where there's a container for that emotion, just a different hue of it. So that's my Beethoven vision. Whereas Mozart and Monk... Monk is interesting because his melodies are so direct and so symmetrical, to the same point of what I was saying about Mozart. But his form in his time was tunes. The melodies were a jumping-off point for great improvisation.
So I approached his music thinking about how to construct longer form movements and to express those melodies in this way that almost borders into abstract expressionism in visual art, where the melody starts to weave itself into other melodies of like kind, and then they start to express a tapestry of melodies and of different forms of the rhythm that he was known for, expressing itself in this contrapuntal way against the melody speaking to each other in this contrapuntal way. And then it turns into Pollock, where you're looking at the canvas and there's this long-form work that was spun out of this 8-bar or 12-bar melodic phrase, or sometimes his measures are odd. You know, he'll have a 13-bar song, or something like "Introspection" or "Boo Boo's Birthday," which I didn't record, but just an example of his way of framing a melody in these 8, 7, 10, 16-bar moments. And how do you spin it out? And in each of those albums, "Meditations vs. Movements," I'm spinning it out in one way, and "Movements," in an other way, is putting it in a healing modality, like a meditation, which his music also had.
And Mozart's music has a sense of that childlike wonder. He wrote music as a child. Which is a deep, deep thing. If you spend time around children and you see the way that they express themselves, even when they're doodling, or if they're creating something, there's a direct connection to the feeling in the work. Now imagine if you had the facility of Mozart at that age, and you're still a child with that same sort of direct inner logic, that direct connection, that tether to the inner feeling, the feeling within that makes you have the creative impulse. And then you could express it at that level. His music has that throughout his entire lifetime. He somehow was still connected to that. That's a deep thing to have in your spirit [Batiste chuckles] and to then be able to access so early.
And Monk, though he wasn't composing on record at that age, I'm sure he, Monk... Who knows, he probably came out of the womb playing. [Batiste and Marcus laugh] But Monk has that sort of blend of the ancestral wisdom and the childlike wonder in his melodies too. And it was with him his entire life. So the lesson that I get from them both, however you approach the music, is to keep that inner child and that freedom of expression and that tether to that creative impulse, keep that alive. So there's so much I could say about all—To encapsulate it, those are the things I hear in each of their spirits and what connects them and what makes them different.
Julia Marcus: I think the way you've just described it, I think that's how you are as an artist, too.
Jon Batiste: Oh, thank you. That's a huge honor. Thanks
Julia Marcus: Yeah! [Batiste and Marcus laugh] That joy, and I think the freedom with creativity.
Jon Batiste: Yes.
Julia Marcus: So you start Black Mozart with this sonata that I think everyone knows, or at least everyone would recognize that tune.
Jon Batiste: Yes. Oh, for sure. [Batiste chuckles]
Julia Marcus: What about that felt like the right place to start?
Jon Batiste: Well, it's something that feels like an opening because if you're listening to classical music your entire life, you know this like the back of your hand. If you've never listened to classical music or you think of yourself as someone who isn't a classical music listener, this is a great introduction to the world, or if you have young people in your life and you want to share music with them, share this music, that piece, that melody, it's literally C. That's the first note you learn on the piano. That's the first thing that you're introduced to. It's something that feels so ubiquitous and such a part of our zeitgeist in understanding music as a whole and music expressed on the piano in particular. And that melody is a C chord. It's an introduction that is hardwired into us.
[Batiste plays the opening theme of Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 16 in C Major, K.545]
And then the scales. The logic. See, you see the melody is going up, it's going down. It's going up, it's going down. There's a beautiful thing that happens when you can hear something for the first time. And I wanted the first track to be, if I'm hearing it for the first time and I've never listened to this kind of music, or if I'm listening as a kid and I don't know anything about my taste yet, I haven't formed my taste yet, I just wanted there to be a very poetic and direct introduction and statement of intent.
["Facile" from Black Mozart plays]
Julia Marcus: I also read that you described Mozart as— I think the quote for you is "the purveyor of the percussive left hand."
Jon Batiste: Oh yeah.
Julia Marcus: Tell me about that.
Jon Batiste: Wow, well that's a thing Monk and him also have in common. Percussive left hand is oftentimes something that if you think about in jazz, you know, with the— [Batiste plays a walking blues line] You're trying to create that motion like a rhythm section. And Mozart had so many melodies going on that the melody is creating a momentum similar to the way that boogie-woogie left hand kind of thing was happening. I feel that he created our understanding. He was one of the earliest composers of creating our understanding of how to give you melody in the left hand, or give you melody in the low register and have it push the music forward in the same way that, you know, if you think about what Monk is doing and all of those different bass lines, he'll have something that'll go like. [Batiste plays Monk bassline] Hear that? That's, to me, a very, very important element of understanding Mozart. How do we get the melodies to sing and move us? And that's a lesson that I took from playing Monk's music growing up and applied to Mozart, that sensibility of the percussive left hand.
Julia Marcus: Was there something in this process of recording Black Mozart that was surprising to you, learning about Mozart and about his music and about his spirit, as you would say?
Jon Batiste: Hmm. I was fortunate to have really great historic education with my earliest mentors and then going to Juilliard and studying history and music. So when I was working on this project in particular, I didn't study him from a historic perspective. It was more listening to as many of the works and finding different sheet music that I had in the house and playing it and listening to it and letting whatever melody spoke to me the most be the starting point. Whatever piece felt that I had a vision for its reinvention or it's a piece that I wanted to be in conversation with through the piano, I would then take it to the piano and I would start. And what really was the main process is what I call the spontaneous composition.
Spontaneous composition is where you have a piece and you start to allow for moments of improvisation to form into clear ideas of structure and arrangement and interpolation, and then allow for that to lead to new melodic themes and new ideas of how to address and redress the harmony. Maybe change the meter, and then that leads to this world of accessing all these other musical influences that are in my mind at the time. So it becomes a portal. Mozart's music became a portal to express many of these other ideas and traditions. So it was all a surprise, to answer your question. Because it was all spontaneously composed from a place of first understanding and addressing Mozart's spirit as much as I could discern of who he was and his intention, and pairing that with the history about him that I know and the pieces of his that I've played and listened to, and creating this sort of... It's a gateway for us to be in conversation through his music. And then for me to bring all these other things that make me who I am, all these things become the information that I'm drawing from and channeling in this spontaneous composition. So I couldn't even tell you specifically what or who or how it came together. Besides that, in the moment, once I've found a real gateway into a new understanding of the work, then it's captured and we record it.
Julia Marcus: Yeah, I bring this up because I listen to Mozart in my day-to-day. I went to school for opera, so I have my favorite recording of "The Marriage of Figaro," or, you know...
Jon Batiste: Yes.
Julia Marcus: And then I heard Black Mozart, And yesterday, you know, I'm at work, I'm turning back to the Mozart that I would listen to on a daily basis, and it felt wild to return to that after listening to Black Mozart. It sort of felt like when you're on vacation, and then you return home and you're like, "Oh, my house smells like this and looks like this." And like, I know, but like, I wasn't really paying attention to it.
Jon Batiste: Yeah, wow, that's an amazing experience. I love hearing that. [Batiste chuckles] Wow, what did you notice? How did that feel for you?
Julia Marcus: I think because I have my favorite recordings, my favorite singers doing it, you know, it becomes a little bit... It shifts to the background, I think. I'm listening to it while I'm driving—
Jon Batiste: Mm, yes.
Julia Marcus: Or cooking or whatever. And then, yeah, it brings it right in front of me. And I think it makes me feel like I'm listening to it for the first time.
Jon Batiste: Yes!
Julia Marcus: And so I'm sort of able to fall in love with the parts of it that I fell in love with before.
Jon Batiste: Oh, wow. That's another way of thinking about it, actually, for me, too. It's by doing this, whether it's Beethoven or Mozart or Monk, I'm falling in love with it again in real time, but through being in conversation with it and trying to create a perspective on it as an artist myself and as a composer myself to try to really, through my love of it, express it in a way that is authentically of my artistry and authentically of my heritage and background and all the other things that I love, and to bring them all together and to express it as an artistic statement rather than as an interpretation.
Julia Marcus: Yeah. So in that way, do you think if you were to perform Mozart again next year or years later, performing it differently? Are you listening to it differently?
Jon Batiste: Well, there's an interesting thing that happens for me when the process is finished. It's spontaneous composition in the moment, but then it becomes fortified. There's a great book. It's called "The Great Pianist," and I was given that book by my piano teacher, William Doglin, he's one of the most important mentors that I've had. He taught me everything that I know about how to play classical piano and how to play the instrument, how to express your artistry through the lineage of the canon. And he gave me this book when we first started working together. And I was maybe 18 or 19, and I didn't know much about the way a lot of the canon of classical music had come to being and how the different practices, performance practices and compositional practices of the great pianists, great interpreters were formed. And what that taught me is that a lot of things, there's a lot of improvisation, a lot of impromptu, compositions or things that were improvised became a big part of how the canon was formed. And I guess that's what I'm doing now, but taking a melody or a theme or a piece in its entirety and learning it and then going on this journey with it to form another piece that—at the core of this new piece is the DNA of the original, but it's a new piece and it's fortified as such in performance. So even if I'm improvising or there are these impromptu moments, I'm basing it on the structure of the new piece.
So it won't be completely improvised, and it's not a new attempt at spontaneous composition. And I'm excited to compose in this way from the piano. I've spent so much time on the piano that it feels spontaneous in the moment, but I know it's based on almost 30 years of— Practice. Thinking and playing and tinkering and experimenting on this instrument that now I feel that I'm able to connect these dots in real time and compose in this way with the help of obviously some of the greatest works of all time as the jumping off point.
Julia Marcus: Yeah, not a bad place to start.
Jon Batiste: Exactly.
Julia Marcus: I do have one last question for you. My question is, on World Music Radio—
Jon Batiste: Yes!
Julia Marcus: —which I love. You have a piece, "Clair de Lune," with Kenny G.
Jon Batiste: Yes.
Julia Marcus: And so I wanted to ask, and I'm not gonna hold you to it, but if there's a classical composer, perhaps Debussy, or somebody else that you think, oh, that's somebody that I wanna dive into and see what I can find.
Jon Batiste: You know, I thought that the first piano series work would be Bach. And I think there's so much there. It's so unfathomable that it just takes a little more processing for me personally, just thinking about my experience the first, classical music that I ever learned to play was Bach's music, starting with the inventions when I was studying with Miss Shirley back in New Orleans, Bach competitions at Loyola University. Bach's music has a very personal place for me in terms of of that, but then also his music, it feels so constructed that it's very, very different in approaching the spontaneous composition of his music. You'd almost have to get inside of the logic of his approach to counterpoint. And then express your musical answer to what his composition is. And then weave it together in a way that points to other things, other connections that I think, I'm already thinking about Charlie Parker.
Julia Marcus: Mm!
Jon Batiste: And then the counterpoint in bebop, which is equally unfathomable.
Julia Marcus: Yeah, yeah.
Jon Batiste: And the lightning-quick wit of Bird and his understanding of how to make melodies at that pace. Everyone who was able to do that in history, which are very few in terms of that sort of lightning intelligence and speed and counterpoint and structure and humanity. It's all about understanding the logic of what that is and being able to express in like kind. That's a, it just, I've been thinking about that. That's gonna take me a few more of a, more explorational sessions on the piano.
Julia Marcus: Well, bebop and Brandenburg, I would love to hear sometime.
Jon Batiste: Crazy!
Julia Marcus: Jon Batiste. Thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you. Thank you very much. Wow.
[MUSIC]
Jon Batiste: Yes.
Julia Marcus: Oh my gosh.
Jon Batiste: Hey, you want to go? Oh, we have to go.
Julia Marcus: Oh my gosh.
Jon Batiste: That part. See that? That's amazing.
[MUSIC]
That's cool.
Julia Marcus: To say the least! Yeah, to say the least.
Black Mozart will be released alongside two Thelonious Monk-inspired albums, Monk Movements and Monk Meditations, on August 14th, 2026.
