A Journey Downstream with Jon Batiste
A Journey Downstream with Jon Batiste
Solo stop on 'Streams' tour wows UB Center for the Arts audience
The art of improvisation is an essential component of any serious musician’s evolution.
Those moments of impromptu searching, when musicians seek to lose themselves in the music, to transcend their instruments and attain something resembling pure inspiration, are thrilling for the musicians, and more often than not, yield material for new compositions.
But how thrilling are they for the listener? That depends on the musician in question. And it depends on the audience, equally.
On Friday, May 10, the right musician met the right audience.
Jon Batiste - who is that rare musician able to cross over to the mainstream, while still retaining a dedication to true musical exploration - brought his Streams tour to UB’s Center for the Arts, and the packed house eagerly and actively participated in a program comprised of roughly 80% fearless improvisation.
It didn’t hurt that Batiste happens to be in possession of prodigious talent. (It might be more accurate to say that prodigious talent is in possession of him. More on that later.)
However, even if the full house of attendees knew Batiste from his multiple Grammy appearances and wins, and his 7-year run as Musical Director of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, they still needed to be willing to take a leap of faith with him, for this would not be a large-scale pop production, with all the bells and whistles such events entail. In fact, this show was about as intimate as it gets.
Batiste took the Center for the Arts stage alone, strolling straight to the edge of the boards, and greeting the throng as if they’d just arrived for a previously scheduled casual dinner party at his place. He raised his arms, smiled, and welcomed us in.
“I invite you to share this space with me,” he said, as if we were already old friends, and made his way to the gorgeous Steinway grand piano at center stage.
“Let’s warm up with a song we’d always play when we get together, where I come from,” Batiste said, and launched into “When the Saints Go Marching In,” the Black American spiritual equally associated with Batiste’s hometown of New Orleans, and Louis Armstrong, whose 1938 recording of the tune made it into a jazz standard. Batiste’s version was rollicking from the get-go, moved through some serious swing sections, and soon evolved into what would become the evening’s thematic thread - deep, fearless, exploratory improvisation.
The first of the night’s many standing ovations followed, and Batiste once again headed for the front of the stage, there to reveal another of his many talents - a gift for storytelling. He discussed the process of improvisation, his need to take a break from his full-band arena touring schedule to return to the piano, his experience as a teenager auditioning for the Julliard School in New York City, and the main impetus for this short Streams tour - the desire to dig deeper into his relationship with the muse, via the piano.
Batiste then dove headlong into the first of the show’s several purely improvised pieces, this one beginning with an elegant, languid chord sequence that offered a nod to Romanticism in general, and Claude Debussy in particular, and then moved with grace through Classical arpeggios, building in intensity as it developed into playful, avant garden commentary, and finally, returning to the Debussy-like initial theme as it concluded.
Improvisations that revolved around jazz-based cadences followed, but Batiste - who’d paused mid-show to speak of his belief that “musicians are vessels for the music, for something bigger than the musicians themselves” - remained committed to surrendering to the moment, to the point where the piano seemed to playing him, rather than vice-versa. It was all astounding, thrilling, surprising, deeply moving, and laced with both intimacy and intensity.
That none of this came across as self-indulgent is a testament to Batiste’s mind-boggling talent. That the audience followed the artist downstream willingly, maintaining what sure seemed to be a state of rapt attention throughout the spontaneously composed pieces’ many twists, turns and detours, was inspirational, for it suggests that audiences can be as hungry for new musical adventure as the bravest musicians are.
Late in the show, Batiste happened upon an improvised melody, and taught it to the crowd. An emotional, wordless singalong ensued, and Batiste’s beaming grin made plain his emotional connection to the proceedings. The man was deeply in it, and he brought all of us there with him.
Batiste rewarded the audience for it’s adventurous spirit with a gorgeous take on his hit “Butterfly,” and responded to our demand for a second encore by grabbing his melodica, hopping off the stage, and offering an up close and personal reprise of “The Saints,” as he walked through the crowd.
It all felt like a combination of a seriously funky church service, a warm and inviting recital in a pristine acoustic environment, and a casual musical hang with an old friend.
Unforgettable, in a word.
I was fortunate to see his Streams performance in Syracuse. It was transcendent. Jon is pure musical genius.
Wow. What a moment! ✨✨✨