Jon Batiste released three new albums at once this week: Black Mozart, Monk Movements and Monk Meditations, continuing a series that began with 2024's Beethoven Blues, NPR reported. The Emmy- and Oscar-winning bandleader told Morning Edition host Michel Martin that the records grew out of his early years as a classical piano student in Louisiana, where he barely spoke until around age 10 while absorbing music from the storied Batiste family of New Orleans jazz, R&B, funk and brass band musicians, and his later jazz studies at Juilliard.
Black Mozart, recorded in a single day and largely improvised, has Batiste taking melodies from some of Mozart's best-known works, including Piano Sonata No. 16, the "alla turca" movement of Piano Sonata No. 11, and the first movement of Symphony No. 40, and reworking them through Black American music traditions such as jazz, blues and folk. "This is just an outgrowth of that, taking the ideas of all this great music and adding to the continuum of it," Batiste said.
That omnivorous approach caused friction with traditionalists during Batiste's student years. "It was rough," he recalled. "I almost didn't make it out of school because every other year they were trying to kick me out," over questions like why he was playing melodica with his band in the subway. He called that kind of gatekeeping "very myopic," arguing music should not be boxed in the way politics and religion often are.
The two Monk-focused records take different approaches to the same source, which Batiste says he first heard through community elders in New Orleans before encountering it again at jam sessions in New York. Monk Movements leans into the virtuosic, joyful side of Batiste's playing on favorites like "In Walks Bud" and "Ugly Beauty," while Monk Meditations is more contemplative, built as what Batiste calls a "spiritual underpinning" you could meditate, chat, pray or sleep to. Batiste said his own childhood composition "Red Beans" carries echoes of Monk's dissonant, disjointed style even though he was not yet familiar with Monk's music when he wrote it.
The triple release, now part of the release calendar, lands the same week Batiste canceled a run of concerts, including a Connecticut festival date, citing personal circumstances, though he has said work around the new albums will continue regardless.
The facts
- Released three albums at once: Black Mozart, Monk Movements and Monk Meditations
- Black Mozart was recorded in a single day and is largely improvised
- Continues a series that began with 2024's Beethoven Blues
- Batiste barely spoke until around age 10 while absorbing music around him as a child
- He said school administrators repeatedly tried to have him kicked out over his unorthodox approach
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