{"id":644016,"date":"2024-11-13T02:19:56","date_gmt":"2024-11-12T23:19:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/jon-batiste-blueses-up-beethoven-its-been-250-plus-years-it-needed-an-update\/"},"modified":"2024-11-13T02:19:56","modified_gmt":"2024-11-12T23:19:56","slug":"jon-batiste-blueses-up-beethoven-its-been-250-plus-years-it-needed-an-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/jon-batiste-blueses-up-beethoven-its-been-250-plus-years-it-needed-an-update\/","title":{"rendered":"#Jon Batiste Blueses Up Beethoven: \u201cIt\u2019s Been 250-Plus Years. It Needed an Update.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\n\tChris Wallace may not be the most obvious artistic muse, but Grammy-winner Jon Batiste owes some credit to the veteran news<\/a>man for inspiring his latest musical experiment.<\/p>\n

\n\tLast year, the pianist and composer\u00a0was a guest<\/a>\u00a0on the CNN\/Max show\u00a0Who\u2019s Talking to Chris Wallace<\/em>. Remarking on how Batiste bridges divides with such category-scrambling efforts as his album\u00a0World Music Radio\u00a0<\/em>and his magnum opus\u00a0American Symphony\u00a0<\/em>(inspiring the Oscar-nominated doc of the same name) Wallace put him on the spot. \u201cCan you show us how you can break a barrier, a musical barrier, go from one genre to another,\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

The New Orleans native\u00a0\u2014 whose career has taken him from Juilliard to\u00a0The<\/em>\u00a0Late Show with Stephen Colbert\u00a0<\/em>to the highest echelons of jazz, pop and classical \u2014 happ<\/a>ily obliged.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHe turned to the piano and began playing Beethoven\u2019s\u00a0F\u00fcr Elise<\/em>, gradually infusing it with blue notes and gospel chords. The result was a joyful, soulful, century-spanning alchemy that caused Batiste to laugh and Wallace to enthuse, \u201cThat is amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBatiste said he was just \u201cmessing around.\u201d But\u00a0the clip<\/a>\u00a0went viral (perhaps one of\u00a0all too few to do so\u00a0on Wallace\u2019s show) proving that there was an appetite for the fusion of traditions Batiste had demonstrated. \u201cMessing around\u201d turned into a full album,\u00a0Beethoven\u2019s Blues<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(out Nov. 15), in which he boldly reinterprets sacrosanct melodies by the great German composer, including\u00a0\u201cOde to Joy\u201d and the \u201cMoonlight\u201d and \u201cWaldstein\u201d sonatas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a wide-ranging conversation with\u00a0THR<\/em>\u00a0just two days after the presidential election, Batiste shared his thoughts on the \u201cthe resilience of the human spirit,\u201d his enduring belief in the uniting power of music and his dream collaboration with Mr. Rogers.<\/p>\n

\n\tI want to start with what\u2019s on everybody\u2019s mind right now. I\u2019m curious, given that your work celebrates this country\u2019s cultural diversity, how you\u2019re making sense of the results of this week\u2019s divisive election.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tWell, I think that the people have the power always. What the people decide \u2014 whether it\u2019s through voting or not voting \u2014 creates the context, but we still have the power moving forward. The context oftentimes could be better. But when I wrote [the orchestral piece] American Symphony<\/em> [which includes elements of jazz, blues, classical, folk, Latin and Native American musical traditions], what I was thinking about was how the greatest transformations in this country have come from people who were at the bottom, not the people in in in power. The people who are at the bottom deciding that their humanity and that of the generations to come are of too much value to allow for them to be dismantled by a system of oppression. So I think that however that manifests over the next administration is the stuff history is made of.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s obviously too soon to tell. But how do you think this new era will affect the kind of work that you want to put out in the world.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019m always going to find a way. You can do so much when you understand that within you, you have this life force that allows for you to create so much of your reality, in collaboration with the Almighty. Everything around you can be falling apart, or it can be glorious, but it\u2019s what\u2019s within you that is the most important thing to make sure that you have a grip on in order to be able to do your thing in the outside world.\u00a0Because then you\u2019ll find a way. You know how they say necessity is the mother of invention? It\u2019s about the resilience of the human spirit and the will of people to make things happen when everybody thought there was no way.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tYour latest project,\u00a0Beethoven Blues<\/em>, bridges not only cultural chasms, but countries and centuries. Why Beethoven?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s been 250-plus years. It was due for an update. Think about how much that\u2019s in the public domain that is a part of our communal memory, our shared reality, that is duly revered but in equal parts stifling when it comes to European classical music. First, there\u2019s this idea of what\u2019s to be valued in art \u2014 what\u2019s to be put on a higher plane of value versus what\u2019s to be looked at as more pedestrian. There\u2019s a cultural context in terms of who\u2019s creating the art and what they would have wanted, and then there\u2019s what that culture represents to the rest of the world, and the question of how we engage with that. There\u2019s a class [element to that]. And where I find all of that to be amiss is that the origins of [jazz and classical] are much more similar [than most people realize]. Jazz music has a lot of spontaneous composition, and early classical music also had a lot of spontaneous composition, yet its contemporary reality is so far away from that that you would imagine that jazz and classical music could never come together. And I find it to be a great thing that you can update it if you have the language and the ability and the craft to put them together. So, that\u2019s why I thought, why not do it?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhy do you think that the tradition of improvisation \u2014 or as you put it, spontaneous composition \u2014 was lost in classical music?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tWell, I think that a lot of it has to do with our reluctance to embrace musical values that come from marginalized cultures. Moreso than that, it\u2019s a matter of scribesmanship. Classical music is written. Even after Bach is gone, we can discover his multitude of scores. There\u2019s a specificity to the written word. But with a lot of the African diasporic traditions, it\u2019s passed on through an oral tradition. And with the scribesmanship of those traditions is not as acutely documented as in classical music. So there\u2019s an authority that comes when something is written, because it allows for people to think: Oh, I don\u2019t even have to hear the recordings \u2014 he wrote it right here. So then people start to try to own the thing that\u2019s written, when maybe that was just what he wrote on a Tuesday, and on a Wednesday it would be a different story. So then people start to say, well, what you wrote, that\u2019s the thing that it has to be every time. But humans change their mind all the time. And cultural context changes, and we evolve, and instruments evolve and technology<\/a> evolves. So why wouldn\u2019t the music evolve? We almost have to reverse-mythologize many of our greatest cultural contributions and recontextualize them in contemporary culture, so they can exist as they truly are.<\/p>\n

\n\tBeethoven was famously a great improviser.\u00a0What do you think he would have made of the reverence with which his music is most often presented, as if it were a museum piece not to be altered?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tWe don\u2019t have recordings of Beethoven playing his music. We know he was an incredibly spontaneous composer, as well as all the things we know and love about him. When he was playing and composing, gospel music, hip hop, soul, blues \u2014 all these incredible musical innovations \u2014 didn\u2019t exist yet. If he was around the day, who\u2019s to say he wouldn\u2019t incorporate those elements, or shift the way that he performs the score every single time.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn\u00a0American Symphony<\/em>, there\u2019s a scene in which you visit your old piano teacher William Dahglian on New York\u2019s Upper West side. You played some Beethoven for him and he critiqued your playing firmly, unaffected by your fame and success. First, how humbling was that? And second, did you consult with him on\u00a0Beethoven\u2019s Blues?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tYes. I went to see him before, and he told me that there\u2019s a real magic in my playing, a rare gift, but that I have to be careful, because I had just finished touring, and he says, \u201cYou\u2019re playing a lot, and I\u2019ve seen people with a rare gift lose it when it becomes rote. It becomes an exercise to please the crowd.\u201d So he mentioned that, and that was really great. He didn\u2019t produce this record in the traditional sense, or sit in the studio and teach me as I\u2019m playing, but just the conversations prior to going in to record it, and me sharing with him the vision of it, and our talking about how I could take what it is in my playing that\u2019s so unique and singular to me and apply it to the classics \u2014 he was such a part of it. And then after I spoke with him, I recorded the album at my house in two days.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen you played your version of\u00a0F\u00fcr Elise<\/em>\u00a0on Chris Wallace\u2019s show, you said you were just \u201cmessing around.\u201d But was it entirely spur-of-the-moment?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tFor years, I\u2019ve had this approach of being in conversation with the classical composers that I would learn in my piano lessons. I would take the songs, and sometimes later that night, I\u2019d be playing them at the Maple Leaf bar in New Orleans, yeah, and I would be melding them into the set that I was playing, and reimagining them in that way. So it there\u2019s always been a natural cross-pollination of influences and genres and mentors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhy do you think the\u00a0Fur Elise\u00a0<\/em>clip resonated the way it did?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI don\u2019t know for sure, but it speaks to something that we all know to be true, but nobody had said yet. It\u2019s the type of thing that\u2019s latent in the air but once it\u2019s verbalized, everyone\u2019s like,\u00a0Oh yeah!\u00a0<\/em>And I\u2019m not just talking about musically. There\u2019s something about the image of Beethoven being played in this way at this time, by these people. There\u2019s a lot of layers to what\u2019s happening.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIf you could jam with any three musicians in history who are\u00a0no longer among us, who comes to mind?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tWow, wow. Wow. [Long pause]. Wait a minute, that\u2019s incredible. Let me see. Let\u2019s see. Let\u2019s see. I think Louis Armstrong has definitely got to be one of them, because he\u2019s so misunderstood as this sort of happy guy that was great at jazz when he really set the tone for any contemporary musical expression as we know it. That would be amazing to do something with him.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnyone else?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tYou know who I\u2019d want to collab with? Mr. Rogers.<\/p>\n

\n\tReally? Well, he was a great piano player\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tYeah. And I think it would be amazing to to build a show with Mister Rogers for the world as it is today. We\u2019d write songs together, and then he and I would host it together.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHey,\u00a0if your last album came out of your interview with Chris Wallace, maybe the next one comes out of an interview with The Hollywood Reporter<\/em>.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yeah!\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat other unexpected musical experiments can we expect from you in coming years? What other divides have you yet to cross?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019m looking forward to bridging the gap between culture and technology. Everybody\u2019s talking about AI, and infusing it with a cultural perspective as we transition our mythology into the digital space more and more. I think that there\u2019s a real need for that to happen.<\/p>\n

\n\tDoesn\u2019t that scare you, the musical mimicry of generative AI?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tNothing scares me. Whatever is the darkest and most relentless force against your wellbeing is also the greatest opportunity for transformation.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Wallace may not be the most obvious artistic muse, but Grammy-winner Jon Batiste owes some credit to the veteran newsman for inspiring his latest musical experiment. Last year, the pianist and composer\u00a0was a guest\u00a0on the CNN\/Max show\u00a0Who\u2019s Talking to Chris Wallace. Remarking on how Batiste bridges divides with such category-scrambling efforts as his album\u00a0World…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":644017,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Cam-A-5422-H-2024.jpg?w=1296&h=730&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[73606,78488],"class_list":["post-644016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-chris-wallace","tag-jon-batiste"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}