Jon Batiste

Bio

Jon Batiste is a eight-time Grammy, Academy, and Emmy Award–winning singer, songwriter, composer, and pianist, renowned for his genre-defying approach to music and his commitment to inclusivity and cultural exploration.

Batiste’s latest studio album, BIG MONEY, is a project rooted in American traditions spanning gospel, soul, blues, folk, and rock & roll.  Featuring collaborations with No I.D., Randy Newman, and Andra Day, the album earned three nominations at the 2026 Grammy Awards and won Best Americana Album.  Batiste supported the project with a national headlining tour that visited over 30 venues across the country, consistently selling out.

BIG MONEY followed 2024’s Beethoven Blues (Batiste Piano Series, Vol. 1). Marking the first installment in his new solo piano series, the project showcases his interpolations of some of Beethoven’s most iconic works, reimagined through an expansive lens. The album topped Billboard’s Classical Albums chart for nine weeks and delivered Batiste’s biggest sales week to date.

In 2023, he released World Music Radio, a globetrotting album of originals inspired by his mission to create community and expand culture through the power of music. Featuring collaborators including Jon Bellion, Lana Del Rey, and Lil Wayne, the project received five Grammy nominations, including Album of the Year.

That same year, he was the subject of Matthew Heineman’s moving Netflix documentary American Symphony, released in partnership with Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground. The film chronicles Batiste’s professional triumphs in 2022 — marked by nine Grammy nominations and five wins for his 2021 album We Are — while he simultaneously confronts his wife’s cancer recurrence. He also co-wrote the film’s original song “It Never Went Away,” which earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song and a Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media.

In 2020, he received two Grammy nominations for the albums Chronology of a Dream: Live at the Village Vanguard and Meditations (with Cory Wong).

Batiste’s work also extends to film composition, most recently contributing the score for Jason Reitman’s 2024 film Saturday Night, which depicts the chaotic 90 minutes leading up to the first broadcast of Saturday Night Live in 1975. He also composed and performed music for the Disney/Pixar film Soul, earning an Academy Award for Best Original Score alongside fellow composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Soul also earned Batiste a Golden Globe, a BAFTA, an NAACP Image Award, and a Critics’ Choice Award.

From 2015 to 2022, Batiste served as bandleader and musical director of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on CBS.