Love, grief and Grammys: Jon Batiste creates an ‘American Symphony’

As Jon Batiste completed his dazzling triumph at the 2022 Grammys, winning trophy after trophy on music’s biggest stage, his wife watched the same way most of us did -on the sofa, at home.

Suleika Jaouad was unable to attend that night because she was battling leukemia. That stark juxtaposition of stratospheric success and brutal reality underpins American Symphony, an intimate new documentary about the couple, out now on Netflix.

“I wanted it to not just show the artistic process, but to show what it takes to achieve a level of greatness in artistry,” Batiste told AFP.

“I also believe that a lesson that we didn’t know we were really putting on display… is creativity as a mechanism of survival.”

The film began life as a straightforward documentary about Batiste’s plan to write and perform a one-night-only contemporary symphony, drawing on music from around the world – but morphed overnight when Jaouad’s cancer returned after nearly a decade.

The result is equal parts love story, meditation on illness, chronicle of family life, and an unflinching examination of the creative process itself.

Jaouad herself is a bestselling writer who penned a New York Times column about her first bout with cancer.

For seven months, cameras followed Batiste as he conducted rehearsals, lay restlessly awake at night with severe anxiety, talked to his therapist about wanting to quit his job, and visited Jaouad in various hospital wards.

“Allowing the camera into these sacred moments of our lives… it was in real time, negotiating,” recalled Batiste.

“Setting boundaries, them pushing against those boundaries, us pushing back.”

During that same period, his album We Are topped the 2022 Grammy nominations, and went on to triumph over Taylor Swift, Kanye West and Billie Eilish to win as the Album of the Year.

But by the time Batiste returned home from Las Vegas with his five Grammys, Jaouad was back in the hospital, battling the effects of chemotherapy and a second bone marrow transplant.

One powerful scene in the film finds Batiste on stage, in front of a packed auditorium, during a two-hour piano recital.

He dedicates the next passage of music to Jaouad, then pauses with his fingers on the keys for a full minute that feels like an eternity, before playing a spellbindingly emotional -and cathartic – improvisation.

“There’s just so much that happens, so much that goes on in a life, that is hard to even put into words,” said Batiste.

“I was processing it in real time in front of the audience.”

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The only guy

The movie, produced by Michelle and Barack Obama‘s film company, is tipped to be a frontrunner for best documentary at the Oscars in March.

Batiste already has an Academy Award, for writing the score to Pixar animation Soul.

Hailed as an artist’s artist, the classically trained scion of a prominent New Orleans musical dynasty first found fame as the bandleader on Stephen Colbert’s popular late-night talk show.

The Grammys success of We Are took Batiste’s celebrity to the next level and, less than two years later, the jazz polymath is nominated for six more Grammys with his next album, World Music Radio.

Among those nods is Best Song for Butterfly, written for Jaouad while she was in hospital.

Batiste is the sole male nominated for Record and Album of the Year, competing against superstars like Swift, Olivia Rodrigo and female supergroup boygenius.

He believes he and the other nominees share more in common – an interest in “real music, real artistry”, where musicians are “in the same room together, breathing the same air” rather than relying on technology and computerised sounds.

Rodrigo is “bringing back a certain old-school style of songwriting”, Eilish is “the voice of her time”, and boygenius are a throwback to a “band dynamic and camaraderie based on their shared values”.

“There’s a lot of examples of what I’m saying, in terms of trying to stretch what is considered popular music,” he said.

“And me being the only guy in the bunch? I’ve been doing this for the past two decades.”

But looking ahead to February’s Grammys ceremony, the main thing on Batiste’s mind is the guest who will accompany him.

“This time around, my favorite thing about it is that she’s doing well, and will be able to attend the Grammys with me,” he said, of his wife.

“For us to be able to celebrate the album and that song, and to also be at the Grammys again, with her this time… it’s full circle.”

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