Jon Batiste & Stay Human

Overview

“I’m always about trying to fill a need with what I do in my artistry,” says Jon Batiste, an artist whose ambition is nothing less than to transform the very lives of his listeners. “There is definitely a need in the performing arts world for a movement to come along that seriously connects with a next generation audience while still maintaining the timeless artistic objectives present throughout the history of the American music tradition.” It’s a goal Batiste is steadily achieving with every performance, every interview, every song, every album.

Those two essential criteria – peerless artistry combined with all the uplifting pleasure of entertainment – exist squarely at the heart of Batiste’s musical vision. And they are both fully evident in every exultant note on Social Music (Razor & Tie), the new album by Batiste and his irrepressible musical collective, Stay Human. Both the title of the album and the name of the band are telling. Now a quartet (with Batiste on piano, vocals and melodica, which he has renamed the harmonaboard; Eddie Barbash on alto saxophone; Ibanda Ruhumbika on tuba; and Joe Saylor on drums), Stay Human has evolved over the past eight years, running the spectrum for a jazz trio to a quintet to a big band with horns.