Clarinetist Alvin Batiste was one of the most original and underappreciated voices in modern jazz — a musician who spent decades in New Orleans teaching and performing, developing a style that absorbed bebop, free jazz, and the New Orleans tradition into something wholly personal.
Biography
Batiste was born in New Orleans in 1932 and studied at Southern University alongside Ornette Coleman, an encounter that pushed his thinking far beyond the conventional. He spent most of his career in New Orleans, teaching at Southern University in Baton Rouge and performing with Ellis Marsalis's groups, while developing a clarinet approach that was almost without precedent — technically demanding, harmonically adventurous, and deeply rooted in the blues feeling of the city he loved. His late recordings for Marsalis Music, made in the last years of his life, finally brought him wider recognition, though the jazz world had long known his importance. He died in 2007, leaving behind a small but extraordinary body of recordings and a generation of students who carry his influence.
Discography
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