Jon Batiste

Jon Batiste was born in 1986 in Metairie, Louisiana, into one of New Orleans' great musical dynasties. He started out on drums and percussion in the family's Batiste Brothers Band, and at his mother's suggestion moved to the piano, taking classical lessons every Saturday through his teens. That double grounding, the parade rhythms of the second line on one side and Bach and Chopin on the other, shaped everything that followed. He went north to the Juilliard School, earning a bachelor's degree in 2008 and a master's in 2011, both in jazz studies.

For seven years, from 2015 to 2022, he led the band Stay Human as musical director of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, playing a compact melodica out among the crowd as readily as he sat at the piano. His score for the Pixar film Soul, written with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, won the 2021 Academy Award, and his album We Are took the Grammy for Album of the Year the following year. He has since gathered seven Grammys across a catalogue that moves freely between jazz, gospel, classical and pop.

Underneath the range is a pianist steeped in stride, blues and church harmony, someone who treats the whole tradition as living material rather than a museum. His playing rewards slow listening: drop the tempo, watch how the two hands trade the pulse, and open a transcription in practice mode to follow the voicings one bar at a time.