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:
