Meet Jon Batiste, Stephen Colbert’s Crowd-Thrilling Rebel Bandleader
Jon Batiste gets off the elevator and doesn’t say a word to the percussionists already tapping out rhythms for a rooftop soundcheck at New York’s NoMad Hotel — he just plops down at the white Steinway and joins in. There’s not much of an audience beyond a handful of photographers, a soundman and some staff steaming a white tablecloth for a makeshift bar. Still, he’s performing: winking and smiling at everyone, digging into the keys, laughing, shouting. Until he gets up from his stool maybe a half-hour later, he doesn’t ever seem too especially concerned with the actual checking of sound.
The New Orleans–raised, New York–adopted pianist, 28, has a laundry list of accomplishments: a master’s degree from Julliard, a position as artistic director at large at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, a cast member on HBO’s Emmy-nominated Treme and — starting this September — a role as the musical director of Late Night With Stephen Colbert on CBS. It’s evident that his greatest attribute, however, is an enthusiasm that immediately pulls people into his orbit.
For many of the six percussionists (and one tap dancer) joining him, this “soundcheck” was also “the only rehearsal” and an “introduction without any official hello or instructions.”
“That was it. None of us had met each other. That was it,” says percussionist Taku Hirano. “The only e-mail we got — one e-mail of where to be and what time. The other e-mail basically just has the list of musicians.”
“The music speaks for itself,” explains Batiste. “I feel like the best thing to ever do with music is to not talk about it. It’s not to be talked about. It’s to be listened to.”
For this rehearsal and the night’s show in front of 165 lucky fans, the band will find its direction via Batiste’s musical cues: a bluesy solo, some salsa-style stabs, driving percussive rhythms, an EDM-style build, a climactic sweep of hands down the keys, a quick version of Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag,” a snatch of Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner,” a total tumble into Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy.” He grabs his melodica and wanders into the packed crowd. Tambourines are passed out and stayed jangling. An impromptu conga lines forms.
Says NoMad co-owner Will Guidara about the first time he saw Batiste: “It was amazing music totally lacking in pretense, which is such a departure from what jazz has grown up to be. Just them getting into the crowd — ‘No, no no, it’s not crowd here, us here. We’re all together.'”
Together Guidara and Batiste (with some financial assistance from Chase Bank) put a residency in motion: seven days in different small spaces around Guidara’s hotel, affordable ticket prices, food and drink, raucous music in tight spaces.
“We have this shared kind of belief in creating experiences for people,” says Guidara “I’m in the hospitality business, and I just thought the approach to music, just fully engaging the people that you’re playing for, felt so profoundly hospitable to me.”
Jon is currently the most prominent branch of the Batiste family tree, a lineage he says goes back four or five generations in New Orleans — free-jazz saxophonist Alvin Batiste is a cousin of Jon’s grandfather, uncle Russell Batiste replaced Zigaboo Modeliste as the drummer of the Meters, Jon himself was a part the Batiste Brothers Band by age six or seven.