Words matter. These are the best Jon Batiste Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
It’s not like the old competition that you had between Leno and Letterman. It’s a friendly competition between Fallon and Stephen.
I played with Prince in 2010… the America tour. The one with Misty Copeland dancing on top of the piano! But Prince played the piano on that song. But I played two dates with him on that tour. When we played the gig, every couple of songs, Prince would change his clothes.
When the Beatles wrote ‘Paperback Writer,’ it couldn’t have been the same old thing. You can hear so many influences in it, from the blues to Bach, and it’s not just verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge chorus. They start off singing a cappella, almost like a Bach chorale, and the song goes into this bluesy guitar riff.
In a live performance, it’s a collaboration with the audience; you ride the ebb and flow of the crowd’s energy. On television, you don’t have that.
On the road, you can’t really develop a personal life.
Early American music and early folk music, before the record became popular and before there were pop stars and before there were venues made to present music where people bought tickets, people played music in the community, and it was much more part of a fabric of everyday life. I call that music ‘root music.’
With so many ways to communicate at our disposal, we must not forget the transformative power of a live music experience and genuine human exchange.
The beauty of jazz is that it can accommodate all styles. You can take jazz and put rock in it, and it’s still jazz.
My whole way of looking at entertainment and audience engagement – and my ability to go from one genre to another – comes from my experience in New Orleans.
As far as music, Louis Armstrong is one of my heroes.
Music is a tool that brings people together.
The thing about Spike Lee… that’s a deep experience to work with someone who is that intense and knows their vision that well. The character I play in ‘Red Hook Summer’ is super country and super loud. I suppose he is some version of myself.
There were so many people after that first ‘Colbert Report’ interview that were impressed by the synergy we had during the interview. People everywhere we’d go would say, ‘You should be the bandleader; it would be great for jazz. It would be great for the music.’ But I was completely against it.
You can’t hate the person next to you when you’re laughing and dancing together.
The Batiste family is a large musical family in Louisiana, out in New Orleans. People go to New Orleans, and if they go to any club, four days out of the week I guarantee you that you will find a Batiste playing in the ensemble.
I have seven uncles, and my dad played bass, they had a band together, that was the family band. And of course as the cousins got older, including myself, we joined a family band. All the cousins played. That’s my heritage.
Earliest musical memory is probably being scared stiff with my family’s band as a youngster on stage playing the conga drums.
Whatever I do with music, I try to make it align deeply with the values and principles of who I am and what I believe the purpose of my life is.
