▶ Watch Video: Jon Batiste: The 60 Minutes Interview
We have met a lot of musicians over the years, but few as original or as gifted as Jon Batiste. He has big ideas and a bigger laugh. You may know he was the bandleader on “The Late Show” with Stephen Colbert, but that was just one stop on his creative journey. At 39, he’s a virtuoso, who loves to play the child-like melodica. He’s intent on breaking down musical silos, blending Beethoven with blues, for example, to make something new. Jazz, classical, folk, pop – really any sounds that fire his imagination – get woven into what he calls “social music.” It draws from every era and every corner of the world with one central purpose: to bring people together.
It’s about 9:30 on a Tuesday night in Manhattan and music fills the air.
At the center of it all, the maestro of the evening: singer, composer and musical dynamo, Jon Batiste.
After tuning up, Batiste led his merry band of musicians to their stage. Where of all places? The New York City subway.
Bill Whitaker: So what would you call this, when everybody came together?
Jon Batiste: We called it a love riot.
Bill Whitaker: A love riot?
Jon Batiste: Yeah. A love riot–
Bill Whitaker: So you’ve got a love riot goin’ on right now–
We followed them from station to platform…
Bill Whitaker: And the train —
And platform to train, where revelry ensued.
For a few stops, an ordinary subway car became the happiest place in New York.
Bill Whitaker: It’s a party in here.
Jon Batiste: Yeah, that’s what I was sayin’. It’s a party, but it’s very serious and this is a mass revival of the soul.
Batiste dreamed up love riots as a student at Juilliard, the famed performing arts school. The subway became a testing ground for his vision of uniting people through music.
Bill Whitaker: That is the most fun I’ve ever had on a New York subway.
Jon Batiste: (Laughing)
Bill Whitaker: Ever
Bill Whitaker: You took this subway car that’s usually a very somber, grim place, and turned it into a happy place.
Jon Batiste: I love seeing how different songs strike a chord with different people. And that’s a beautiful thing, when you can bring somebody that kind of unexpected feeling of– of belonging, feeling like they’re not alone in the world.
Bill Whitaker: Now what- what does that do for you?
Jon Batiste: I just enjoy the idea of being this vessel that unites people, brings people together, against all odds. That’s a form of faith, for me.
Jon Batiste: Three or four songs–
We joined Jon Batiste at a temple to that faith: Electric Lady Studios in Greenwich Village.
Jon Batiste: Let me get mine together.
A who’s who of artists have passed through here: Stevie Wonder, David Bowie, Taylor Swift.
Batiste seemed to draw music from thin air. None of this was written down or rehearsed – he’s constantly improvising.
As his fingers fly over the keys, music takes human form. Its tension and joy flow through his body and play across his face. At the keyboard he seemed lost in a trance.
Jon Batiste: You want to listen in here?
We went to the control room. Only listening to the playback, did he really hear what he had created…
Jon Batiste: Ahhh! (Laughing)
You could tell from his laugh…
Jon Batiste: Woo
He liked it…
Jon Batiste: Oh.
A lot.
Jon Batiste: Woo, ohh, ahhh…
Bill Whitaker: That’s the first time you actually hear it?
Jon Batiste: Yeah, when I’m playin’ it, I’m feelin’ it. I want to stay in a certain flow and feeling.
Jon Batiste: Ah ha.
When Batiste talks about music …
Jon Batiste: And you go back to the first hymn that they found in Syria or you know, you go to the– the first drums or the cymbals in– in Neolithic China or you go–
He seems to come from a different world.
When he plays, he takes you to that other world. For Batiste, those creative feelings flow from improvisation.
Jon Batiste: Ah! (Laughter.) Yeah, you heard it? You heard it?
Bill Whitaker: Just watching you right now, you start playing the piano–
Jon Batiste: Yeah.
Bill Whitaker: –and you light up.
Jon Batiste: Yeah.
Bill Whitaker: Everything about you lights up?
Jon Batiste: It’s- it’s a- it’s a calling. When I get to the piano, there’s a– that’s the openness. It’s a tidal wave. I can express all of those things that are here, in here, in here. So you are seeing the physical representation of that on my face, I guess, or in my body, is– you know, there’s a change.
His life changed dramatically in 2014. He started dating old friend – artist, and writer Suleika Jaouad who has been in and out of treatment for leukemia. He once brought a love riot to her hospital ward. They’re now married.
Jon Batiste: I’m a jazz musician.
Also in 2014, he impressed the star of “The Colbert Report.”
Jon Batiste: Everybody’s always improvising. You like reading scripts but– (LAUGHTER)
When Stephen Colbert took over “The Late Show,” he asked Jon Batiste and his Stay Human band to join him. He was Colbert’s bandleader for seven years, all the while creating his own music. He put jazz in the score of Pixar’s “Soul“ and took home an Oscar. The year he left the late show, 2022, he won five Grammys, including album of the year for “We Are.” He now has eight Grammys, two Emmys, and plays to sold out venues around the world.
We caught up with Batiste at the Hollywood Bowl last month, where the full sweep of his musical imagination took center stage.
Rhythm and blues, pop, Beethoven: He mixes musical genres without missing a beat.
It may be hard to believe, but this electrifying performer doesn’t seek the spotlight.
Jon Batiste: Man, I gotta tell you, Bill, I’m an introvert. I’m a deeply, deeply introverted person. Until my early adolescent years, I felt that I was in this world of my own internal design.
That world was in the New Orleans suburb, Kenner, Louisiana. He grew up in a musical family, but told us he barely spoke until he was about 10. He would sit in this Magnolia tree in his family’s front yard and observe.
Jon Batiste: I would go into the tree to kind of really understand stillness. You go in the tree, and time stops. You gotta find your tree in your life.
Bill Whitaker: So what got you out of your shell, out of your tree? Was it music?
Jon Batiste: It’s what music can do and what, in that stillness, was being revealed to me that I can do, and then believing it, having the audacity to believe it.
He didn’t set out to be a musician, but at his mother’s urging, he took up the piano, and excelled.
That’s him at 15. By the time he graduated high school, Batiste was playing gigs across New Orleans. But he wanted a greater challenge, so he went to New York and auditioned for Juilliard.
Jon Batiste: You had to be able to read music. And you know I started–
Bill Whitaker: You came to Juilliard and you didn’t know how to read music?
Jon Batiste: No, man. In the audition there was a sight reading test on the spot. I’m like I can’t read this. What am I gonna do?
So, he improvised.
Jon Batiste: Whatever it was, in that moment, was certainly not what was on the page, but it was music that was coming through me at that moment.
He got in … but soon found he didn’t fit in. Batiste told us his free spirit clashed with the school’s more structured methods. At one point, exasperated instructors sent him to see a psychologist.
Jon Batiste: (laughter)
Bill Whitaker: ‘Cause you didn’t conform?
Jon Batiste: I remember just being misunderstood to the point that they sent me to the psychologist. He really understood and saw me and helped me to understand, at that beginning stage of my journey, that I may be weird, but, “You’re all right, son.”
Bill Whitaker: That turned out to be a good thing?
Jon Batiste: Yeah.
He decided then and there to create his music his way without apology.
Jon Batiste: It’s really tough, man. It’s annoying. You have to be comfortable being misunderstood. You have to be comfortable moving at a pace that is not at the pace with the rest of the world.
We found it hard to keep pace with him. He’s always on the move as we saw at rehearsal at the Hollywood Bowl.
Jon Batiste: Now we gotta redo the set list.
Improvising right up to the last minute.
Jon Batiste: Let’s- let’s work on that real quick.
Jon Batiste: (Singing) You, you sent me–
His career is soaring but his wife Suleika’s leukemia has returned. She’s had to isolate and, this month, she went into the hospital for her third bone marrow transplant.
Bill Whitaker: It seems like a lot of your brightest moments coincides with some of yours and Suleika’s toughest times. You– were nominated for multiple Grammys at the very same time that she was facing her second bone marrow transplant?
Jon Batiste: Everybody has something that they’re dealing with and the highs are never separate from the low points. That’s life. And it’s a part of how you– find gratitude in life. It’s the– the way that you find gratitude for each other.
On stage that night, before a packed house, Batiste performed “Butterfly”…
Jon Batiste: (Singing) Butterfly all alone–
A lullaby he’d composed to help Suleika’s healing.
Jon Batiste: (Singing) Can you find your way home?
Jon Batiste: Everybody put your lights in the air. You’re a butterfly.
Bill Whitaker: When you asked everybody to hold up their phones and the whole place lit up.
Jon Batiste: Yeah that’s symbolic. That’s evidence of the light that we ignited in these people tonight.
Bill Whitaker: That was for her.
Jon Batiste: Yes. Yes.
Jon Batiste: (Singing)
Jon Batiste: If you feel like you’re in the dark, if you’re in that crowd, and holdin’ that light up, I got a light in me. I can move forward.
Produced by Marc Lieberman and Cassidy McDonald. Planning producer, Kara Vaccaro. Broadcast associate, Marcos Caballero. Edited by Warren Lustig.
