by Kevin McLaughlin
Jon Batiste is an eager traveler across musical borders. At Blossom Music Center on Thursday, August 20, the pianist, singer, and composer demonstrated his broad musical fluency, moving among jazz, gospel, blues, pop, and classical music in a Cleveland Orchestra program that was both exhilaratingly loose and more coherent than its variety suggested.
Drawing on Batiste’s albums Hollywood Africans, WE ARE, World Music Radio, Beethoven Blues, and BIG MONEY, the program ranged from Batiste originals to classical staples, and jazz standards, with detours into gospel and dance breaks.
Batiste arrived onstage to a standing ovation, dressed in a white suit and carrying a white coffee mug. He was joined by a trio — guitar, drums, and voice — whose precision and easy rapport anchored the performance.
Without a word, Batiste sat down to play his own Nocturne No. 1 in D minor, a performance that was rhythmically elastic and technically startling but rarely showy for its own sake. Phrases that began in a classical idiom kept changing shape, picking up blues inflections, gospel chords, and flashes of New Orleans swagger.
A stellar jazz pianist, Batiste’s improvisations on Thelonious Monk’s “Blue Monk” and “In Walked Bud” caught Monk’s angular wit and rhythmic displacement, then sent the tunes through Beethoven-inflected transformations. Here, Art Tatum’s influence became apparent: Batiste’s technique was dazzling, but invention remained foremost. “Cry” followed, carrying the music into something more tender and humane.
He was surprisingly taciturn. Despite the audience participation, Batiste was sometimes subdued, even introspective. His signature joyfulness came through more in the music than in his stage manner.
His own songs, including “Freedom” and “We Are,” became sing-alongs. Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” slipped into “Blessed Assurance,” then into Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” all three carrying the same note of hope.
Unafraid of sentiment, Batiste sang Hoagy Carmichael’s “Georgia on My Mind” and “What a Wonderful World,” songs forever linked to Ray Charles and Louis Armstrong. Both sounded easy and natural. His pronunciation of “Cuyahoga,” inserted into the final verse of “Georgia,” was a little off, but that only made the moment more endearing. After Batiste told the crowd, “I love you,” a listener shouted back: “We love you back!”
He also ranged beyond the piano, taking up alto saxophone and electric guitar. He played both with enough command and musical instinct to make them more than novelties.
Conductor Jonathan Taylor Rush held together a program built around spontaneity, keeping the orchestral framework steady while giving Batiste room to stretch his wings. The Cleveland Orchestra proved an alert and flexible partner, particularly in 5th Symphony in Congo Square and Batiste’s treatment of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40. Clean textures, crisp rhythmic responses, and quick dynamic shifts made the Orchestra an agile counterpart, while the arrangements gave the winds and brass plenty to do.
Near the end, Batiste’s “Butterfly” brought out the cell phone lights as the audience sang along, Bobby McFerrin-like, to what he called a “healing lullaby.” The encore, a reprise of “When the Saints Go Marching In,” felt anticlimactic after that.
By then, Batiste had covered a remarkable range of musical thought, and the best moments were hybrids — one style transforming into another in delightfully unexpected, yet somehow inevitable, ways.
Photo by Kevin Libal
Published on ClevelandClassical.com, September 2, 2026
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