Jon Batiste finds the Blues in Beethoven

When it comes to revisiting older works, musicians have a "golden opportunity," says Jon Batiste. "You can connect dots that were never connected before." That's what Batiste is doing in his new album Beethoven Blues, in which he re-imagines Beethoven's compositions.

Beethoven's work taps into a "universal connective, magnetic truth in music," Batiste explains, that you also hear in blues. "It's like things that make you cry every time you hear them; things that make you dance, every time you hear them. It's just something in the DNA of that sound."

Batiste was the bandleader and music director of the Late Show with Stephen Colbert until 2022. He attended The Juilliard School and is now on its board. His Grammy nominations and wins span a wide range of categories including Jazz, American Roots, Contemporary Classical, R&B, New Age, Contemporary Instrumental and more.

He's currently nominated for two Grammys for his documentary American Symphony. The film is about composing his "American Symphony," and performing the premiere in Carnegie Hall in 2022. The film also documented the period when his now wife, writer Suleika Jaouad, was diagnosed with a recurrence of leukemia, which had been in remission.

Batiste believes that classical music is "ripe for transformation" — Beethoven included. "There's a sense of this rigid exactness to the score and this sort of this over-reverence" of classical music, Batiste says. Artists should embrace the opportunity "to remix it, to update it … not that the original wasn't great and transcendent ... but there's also a lot of things since then that have happened. And for us to connect those dots is one of the great things that we're able to do."

Interview Highlights

On beginning his album with "Für Elise"

It's something that brings people together around the piano. It's that thing that if you're at a party and you had a piano lesson once or twice in your life and you're having fun that night, you might go and play. Or somebody plays it and it's just so ubiquitous, it connects to something that is rare for us to have, all of us in our collective memory: a song, a melody, a theme like that. … It's one of the first things that I learned. And then I had this habit ... of being in conversation with the composer. And once I learn something, changing things, adding themes, adding chords and and really making it my own in that way.

On his trouble fitting in at The Juilliard School

I was just a very, very ambitious, precocious teenager in New York from Louisiana. … I felt like I could go out and put bands together. ... I'd get dancers and actors and musicians, and we would go down into the subways and we'd play for folks. I just don't think at that time they could understand the bigger vision that I saw in my head. So things started to get to a point where they felt I wasn't focused enough. …

I had a fairly easy time with some of the assignments … and I would basically sometimes sit in class ... hearing music in my head and I'd sing out loud. … And then they would think, Well, what's wrong with this guy? And he's got this melodica that he's carrying around and he's doing all of these zany projects. …

I got to the point where the things I was doing outside of school — I was touring and I was playing shows — and I was coming in and I was doing the work, but I also was not following the pattern of the ideal student. And it became a question of, is my ambition going to pull me out of school before they kicked me out of school? And they wanted me to make the choice. So it was just one of those periods of time where … you learn how to prioritize your life and how to balance your life. And you also learn that you got to stick to your guns because maybe nobody sees it yet but you — but that doesn't mean it's not true.

On returning to Juilliard 

My dad is my first musical mentor, and he's someone who, through his experience playing on the Chitlin' Circuit … and just his stories of traveling, he'd always wished that he could go to a school like Juilliard. … So it was for the legacy of my family. Now fast forward ... I'm on the board and I'm helping to change the place for folks who come in there like me, who are maybe not the typical conservatory musician student.

On experiencing success in his career at a time when his wife was very sick 

There's a deep sense of connectivity that you have with your soul mate. … When you're on television, when you're accepting an award that everyone in the world is telling you you should want more than anything else – you have this feeling in the back of your mind, in your heart, that I could lose my soulmate at any moment. That is a pressure like none other, and that is a force that ransacks your psyche in a way that – I didn't realize the power of creativity as an antidote until then.

And through our shared creativity, there was a lot of light that we created together and apart from each other. I sent her lullabies she would paint. … She couldn't write. Her vision was blurred from all the medication. And she's this incredible renowned writer, but she couldn't write, so she began to paint. And just that practice alone was a form of transformative healing power and light. It gave me the motivation to be able to leave her because I didn't want to leave her side.

It's funny to say going to a Grammy ceremony where you're nominated 11 times is work, but it puts things in perspective when you're that close to losing this person in your life. But for me, at that time, creativity was the power that allowed for us to stay connected and for me to have the will to go out and do all the things that you saw me doing at that time.

On his joyful public persona

I think that I'm associated with joy because I do it to a level that is hard to come by. I do it well. And it's not something that you see often. In particular, when you think of performers who are in the mainstream. … I think it's very important to have joy in your expression, in the expression of Black American artists and artists across all cultures. Joy is something that continues to transcend and stand the test of time. But I also think that there's always been this underpinning in my music that's coming from struggle and coming from many things that maybe transmute into joy later but don't start that way.

On the theme in "American Symphony"

That's one example of something that certainly leads to joy, but comes from deep, deep pain and an unresolved duress that our country is founded upon. And many of the things that we are in debate or around, the culture clashes of our time and the shift that is occurring right before our eyes and our time, and really just thinking about a theme that cuts through all of that and really speaks to it at the same time. This melody, it could be a chant. It could be a prayer. It can be a hymn. It can be a war cry.

Ann Marie Baldonado and Anna Bauman produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.

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