Jon Batiste: The Virtuoso Who Turns Subways Into 'Love Riots'

Jon Batiste was not born a musician. His mother insisted he learn piano, and he obeyed. Now, at 39, he fills sold-out concert halls across the world and has won eight Grammy Awards, two Emmys, and an Oscar. But the most telling measure of his gift may be what happened on a Tuesday night at 9:30 in a Manhattan subway car, where he and a band of musicians turned an ordinary commute into what he calls a "love riot."

Batiste grew up in Kenner, Louisiana, in a musical family, but he barely spoke until he was ten years old. He would sit in a magnolia tree in his front yard and watch the world pass. That tree became his sanctuary—a place where time stopped and he could understand stillness. When he finally did speak, it was through music. He took up piano at his mother's urging and excelled quickly. By the time he finished high school, he was playing gigs across New Orleans. But he wanted more, so he auditioned for Juilliard in New York.

He arrived at the school unable to read music. During the sight-reading test, he improvised instead, playing something that had nothing to do with what was written on the page but everything to do with what was moving through him in that moment. He was admitted anyway. But Juilliard's structured methods clashed with his free spirit. Instructors were so exasperated by his refusal to conform that they sent him to see a psychologist. The psychologist understood him in a way the school did not. He told Batiste he might be weird, but he was all right. That conversation changed everything. Batiste decided then to make music his way, without apology, and to accept that he would be misunderstood.

His approach is what he calls "social music"—a deliberate blending of every sound that fires his imagination. Beethoven sits next to blues. Jazz flows into folk. Classical merges with pop. The genres dissolve into something new, unified by a single purpose: to bring people together. He improvises constantly, rarely writing anything down. At Electric Lady Studios in Greenwich Village, where Stevie Wonder and David Bowie once worked, his fingers move across the keyboard as if drawing music from the air itself. Only when he listens to the playback does he truly hear what he has made.

The love riots began as a student idea at Juilliard. The subway became his testing ground. On that Tuesday night in Manhattan, Batiste led his band onto a train car and transformed it into what he described to the interviewer as "a mass revival of the soul." For a few stops, strangers became witnesses to each other's joy. He spoke about the power of that moment with precision: bringing someone an unexpected feeling of belonging, making them know they are not alone in the world. For him, it is a form of faith—being a vessel that unites people against all odds.

In 2014, his life shifted in two ways. He began dating Suleika Jaouad, an artist and writer he had known before. She has leukemia and has been in and out of treatment. He once brought a love riot to her hospital ward. They are now married. That same year, Stephen Colbert asked him to be the bandleader for "The Late Show." Batiste stayed for seven years, creating his own music all the while. He scored Pixar's "Soul" and won an Oscar. When he left the late show in 2022, he won five Grammys in a single year, including album of the year for "We Are."

But success and hardship have moved in tandem. Suleika's leukemia returned. She has required isolation and hospitalization for multiple bone marrow transplants. When Batiste was nominated for multiple Grammys, she was facing her second transplant. He spoke about this plainly: everybody has something they are dealing with, and the highs are never separate from the low points. That is life. That is how you find gratitude.

At the Hollywood Bowl, before a packed house, he performed "Butterfly," a lullaby he composed to help Suleika's healing. He asked the audience to hold up their phones, and the entire venue lit up with light. He told them: if you feel like you are in the dark, and you are holding that light up, he has a light in him too. He can move forward. That light, he said, was evidence of what they had ignited together that night.