Modern maestro Jon Batiste displayed his magic Thursday night with a freewheeling 85-minute set at the Landmark Theater.
Fresh off his Uneasy Tour, his first time as a headliner, Batiste brought his STREAMS show – a completely improvised solo piano performance – to a diverse Syracuse audience.
Before kicking into a true stream of consciousness, though, Batiste began by paying tribute to an iconic moment in the theater’s rich history – the 1939 Syracuse premiere of “The Wizard of Oz.” The piano man said he just learned this fact earlier in the day, but was inspired enough to incorporate it into the show. Batiste warmed the crowd up with a genre-crossing rendition of “Over the Rainbow,” beginning with a standard jazz approach and abruptly shifting into a technicolorful style all his own.
After leading the audience through a whirlwind of classical runs and avant-garde arpeggios (which prompted hooting, wooing, and cries of “Hallelujah!” from fans), Batiste closed out the nearly eight-minute track and addressed the audience before beginning his stream . He described the concept of the show as an attempt to channel the same creative, freestyling energy he has when playing in his living room in New Orleans with a few close friends.
“Beethoven would sit down, and he would improvise, and that would be where his next symphony would come from. You hear these stories about the moment of inspiration, that stream of consciousness,” Batiste said. “Sharing that with people in a community like this is something that I’ve always wanted to do, and this is the first time that I’m actually able to do this, so thank you for taking this journey.”
Before launching into the stream, Batiste told a funny story about auditioning for The Juilliard School, where he was challenged to perform a complex piece for a panel of judges. Batiste described himself as a late bloomer, having only begun piano five years before this audition. As such, he could read music and play by ear, but he wasn’t yet able to sight-read new compositions. Unsure what to do, the 17-year-old Batiste made a decision that shaped his perception of performance forever.
“The choice that I made was to not say anything and to look at the page – but also not to play what was on the page,” Batiste said, prompting an eruption of laughter. “I’m glad that I learned how to read, but the discovery in that moment was, I looked at the page and I started to play music that had just come to me, I just always had melodies that come to me, and I was just channeling it through the piano.”
For the next half hour, Batiste did just that, letting the music play through him. He hunched over the keys, invoking Beethoven with symphonic movements, then shifted to the boogie-woogie blues of a classic New Orleans dive bar. He leaned away from the piano, eyes closed, head cocked back in ecstasy – then stood on his tip toes, frozen in place like a jockey holding on for dear life to a galloping groove. All the while, the rapturous rhythms flowed out of his ever-moving fingers. At one point, Batiste even stood up and performed a funky beat by reaching into the piano and plucking the strings within him while kicking out a bass rhythm with his feet. When he finally finished 30 minutes later, the audience was as blown away as those old Juilliard judges.
“I loved that first movement where they – I’m talking like I wasn’t playing,” Batiste joked. “It went from the E minor to the A minor, and this different theme, and then it was like some colors were happening.”
Batiste took the audience on another spiritual journey with an incredible rendition of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” which lasted almost 15 minutes. Then, he went into some of his fan favorites, such as “Butterfly” and “Drink Water.” Encouraging the crowd to sing with him “like a choir of angels”, he conducted from his piano bench, then briefly led with his melodica (a keyboard that you blow into).
Closing with “FREEDOM,” Batiste left the stage – only to bounce back out two minutes later for a 10-minute medley of famous tracks like “Hallelujah” and “Killing Me Softly With His Song” – and the crowd sang along for the entire encore.
With magic seemingly up his sleeves, and music pouring out his fingers, Jon Batiste truly exceeds all expectations.
Unlike the titular fraudster of Oz, the Wizard of NOLA’s magic is real.
Setlist:
Over the Rainbow
Improvisation
I Will Survive
Butterfly
Drink Water
FREEDOM
Encore:
Medley: Hallelujah/When the Saints Go Marching In/ Killing Me Softly With His Song/ Beethoven’s 5th Symphony/ Over the Rainbow
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