Schedule
schedule announcement coming march 2026
From the city of New Orleans, a magical place that has given us countless musical gifts, we offer you another – the incomparable Jon Batiste.
Born to a New Orleans family steeped in music, young Jon started his journey on the drums. But once he sat down to the eighty-eights, it was clear where he belonged. He studied music first at the New Orleans Center for Musical Arts, and then at the Juilliard School, where he earned his master’s degree in jazz. Fans of late-night satirist and television host, Stephen Colbert will know Jon and his band, Stay Human, as the house band for The Late Show for more than 300 episodes, which included the 2016 release of The Late Show EP. He’s the recipient of 20 Grammy nominations, has won five, and, for his work on 2020’s film Soul, he has on his mantle an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, a BAFTA and an NAACP Image Award. Whew!
Let’s bring it to the right here, right now. Jon’s latest record is Big Money, an album that he says is his musical response to a socio-political environment of wealth stratification, climate degradation, and consumerism. “There are so many ways that that manifests. There are a lot of things that are happening in the world, and it makes people want to go back home, and go back to the roots, back to the source. The question of our time is how we orient ourselves towards the massive abundance of resources and big money that has created this massive wealth gap and separation of resources.”
The Big Money title track served as the starting point for the songs that would follow and was written (along with most of the other tracks) on guitar, rather than on piano. “Sonically … it’s built on a blues form, a Bo Diddley beat, and it has a New Orleans clave. It has all of the elements I love in terms of the crossover between bluegrass, folk, and spirituals.”
Big Money is also up for three Grammys and features a duet with his friend and fellow composer Randy Newman on the bluesy “Lonely Avenue.”
It’s an album full of surprises, a soaring flight across numerous genres, and a testament to this incredible musician’s genius. And now he’s here. This will be a performance for the ages.