Batiste at his home in New Jersey, playing one of his hand-painted melodicas.
Jon Batiste’s professors at the Juilliard School in New York were so disturbed by it that they called in a psychotherapist. One of his hometown mentors, the jazz icon Wynton Marsalis, was likewise appalled. “Get that thing off the stage,” he’d gripe. Even workaday subway riders, herding past Batiste’s underground performances, might’ve thought something was off-kilter, unusual, all that incredible virtuosity funneled into…what’s that thing even
called, anyway?
“Melody horn, melodion, harmonichord, mouth piano…” Batiste is inventorying the names for the peculiar instrument in his hands, the source of all that former tension but also, more important, almost lifelong delight. “If you look online,” he says, “there’s even more.” Indeed there are: pianica, melodihorn, triola, hooter, piano horn, and the rather sultry-sounding orgamonica. But most players, Batiste included, ca
Jon Batiste Releases New Album WE ARE
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The Funk and the Fire: At Home With Judith Hill
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