Jon Batiste — NOLA Music

Never heard Jon Batiste before?

Jon Batiste was born into New Orleans music royalty — the Batiste family has produced generations of the city’s musicians — and he took that inheritance everywhere. After Juilliard, he became the bandleader of Stay Human on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, turning a network TV gig into nightly proof of his virtuosity and joy. His 2021 album We Are won five Grammys including Album of the Year, and his score for Pixar’s Soul won the Academy Award. He now leads the National Jazz Museum in Harlem while staying rooted in the city that made him.

🎵 Album of the Year

We Are (2021)

🎬 Anthem

“Freedom” (2021)

👑 Earlier Statement

Hollywood Africans (2018)

Batiste’s five-Grammy night in 2022 — Album of the Year for We Are — was one of the most decorated evenings in recent Grammy history, and he did it without leaving his roots behind.

Why We Love Jon Batiste

The joy is real and the technique is staggering. Batiste plays stride piano in the lineage of James Booker and Professor Longhair, sings like a soul shouter, and treats genre boundaries as friendly suggestions — his performances feel like celebrations even at their most serious. Few musicians alive can move so freely between a jazz club, a pop stage, and a film score without losing themselves.

And he brings New Orleans with him everywhere, untranslated — Colbert’s audience, the Grammys, the Oscars, Carnegie Hall all got the unfiltered thing. Then he comes home, plays the city, and speaks the tradition’s name out loud. He’s the rare superstar who makes the hometown prouder with every step he takes.

Biography

A New Orleans Prodigy Goes Global

Jon Batiste was born in Metairie, Louisiana in 1986 into one of New Orleans' great musical families — the Batiste family has produced musicians for generations. He showed prodigious ability from childhood and enrolled at the Juilliard School in New York, where he developed his extraordinary technique while maintaining the soulful foundation of his New Orleans upbringing.

He became widely known as the bandleader of Stay Human on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, a role he held for years and which demonstrated his gifts as an entertainer, improviser, and musical communicator. His performances on the show were consistently remarkable for their musicality and joy.

"Music is a healing force. That's what I learned growing up in New Orleans."

— Jon Batiste

His album We Are (2021) was a commercial and critical triumph, winning five Grammy Awards including Album of the Year — one of the most decorated nights in recent Grammy history. The record demonstrated the full range of his ambition and musical intelligence, drawing on jazz, R&B, soul, and pop in service of a deeply personal artistic statement.

Batiste is also the composer of the score for Pixar's Soul (2020), for which he won an Academy Award. He remains deeply connected to New Orleans, performing in the city regularly and speaking about the city's musical tradition as foundational to everything he does.