Mr Eclectic Comes to Town

JON BATISTE IS BRINGING HIS GENRE-DEFYING BRAND OF MUSIC TO INDIA

- Amit Gurbaxani

WHEN ATTENDEES IN DELHI AND MUMBAI TAKE THEIR SEATS TO watch American singer-songwriter Jon Batiste play his Maestro series of concerts, the setting might seem like that of a Western classical music recital. Batiste, who released the interpretive album Beethoven Blues in 2024, will perform solo at the piano. But the show will span multiple styles of music, from jazz and blues to pop and soul to rock and funk. The seven-time Grammy winner who took home Album of the Year for We Are in 2022-has a repertoire so eclectic that he has tried to find different ways to explain "the genre of Jon Batiste". In 2013, he coined 'Social Music' to "describe his philosophy and the intention of the music, which is to bring all the different forms of human creativity under one tent". It served as the titl