Fresh off the heels of his recent GRAMMY win for his latest release, BIG MONEY, Jon Batiste has announced the release of not one, but three new albums as part of his Batiste Piano Series.
The first of the three, Black Mozart, coming out on June 19 via Decca Records, pays tribute to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart by reimagining his music through an African American musical lens. “He absorbed everything that led to him and was the obvious successor of Johann Sebastian Bach,” says Batiste in a statement. “I reimagined Mozart ‘Black,’ imbuing it with influences from jazz, rags, stride, blues, and stomps but still maintaining its core essence of modern classical music.”
Black Mozart‘s release falls on the Juneteenth holiday, speaking to the deep cultural significance of the project. Two singles, “Alla Blues” and “Alla Turc Movement,” have been released ahead of the release.
The first volume in the Batiste Piano Series, Beethoven Blues, was widely acclaimed and celebrated, sitting at #1 on the Billboard Classical Albums chart for five consecutive weeks and #1 on Classical Crossover Albums for nine consecutive weeks.
Following the release of Black Mozart, Batiste will continue to explore the intersections of classical music with jazz through the music of Theolonius Monk. The albums, Monk Meditations and Monk Movements, are the third and fourth volumes in the Batiste Piano Series that aims to “curate a musical conversation between Monk and Mozart.”
““Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a pioneer who created his own musical language yet honored his predecessors,” he says. “Thelonious Monk, for me, [is] a latter-day example of all the same qualities.”
Monk Meditations and Monk Movements will be released on August 14 on Verve Records. Batiste is currently embarking on his Jon Batiste Live: A Fantastical Musical Journey tour with international dates in the UK, South America and the US.
