Multi-Grammy award winner Jon Batiste is known for creatively blending genres. He brings his interpretations of Mozart and Beethoven as well as his originals to a night at Blossom Music Center with the Cleveland Orchestra Aug. 20.
Batiste said he is looking forward to playing “5th Symphony in Congo Square” from his album “Beethoven Blues.” The piece mixes Beethoven’s well known Fifth Symphony with an African clave.
“That syncopated rhythm plays throughout the orchestra,” Batiste said. “It feels like an incredible, circular, communal, but still very constructed and orchestral feeling.”
Congo Square is a historic site in New Orleans – not far from where Batiste grew up- where Black people have gathered and shared music for generations.
In revisiting and reimaging Beethoven and Mozart, Batiste breathes jazz, gospel and blues into their works. While those famed composers are not around to hear Batiste's interpretations, he said he believes they would appreciate the work, noting how they were iterative and improvisational too.
“What I gather is this would be invited not only because it continues their work being contemporized and the legacy of their work in the world, which was something very important to all of the greats. But also I think they would have been competitive about it,” he said.
Batiste is also paying tribute to jazz pianist Thelonious Monk with two new albums.
“He’s very kindred to Mozart in that they're both extremely complex in the symmetry and the logic … in the structure of their music and the melodicism of their music,” he said. “But it also is super playful and accessible, almost like a nursery rhyme or lullaby, something that's hummable and singable.”
The former bandleader for the Late Show with Stephen Colbert and co-composer of Pixar’s “Soul” has another film score on the horizon: a remake of “The Thomas Crown Affair” starring Michael B. Jordan.
This summer Batiste has been playing concerts around the world. He said he finds playing for different people in different places similar to studying music over time.
“We all have the same hopes and desires and dreams,” he said. “We share that humanism, and we share that collective consciousness and humanity.”
