Gian Batiste Basile

WE ARE is a masterfully constructed and visionary album that represents a completely new sonic chapter for Jon Batiste and a new direction for music culture as a whole. Writing, travelling, painting - all while inviting some of the most esteemed creative minds to assist in birthing the album - he reached the finish line smack in the middle of the first wave of the worldwide pandemic and volatile social unrest. At the end, a masterpiece of Black Pop Music characterized by the consciousness of Marvin Gaye, the grounded optimism of Stevie Wonder, the iconoclasm of Thelonious Monk and the swagger of Mannie Fresh was born.

The soundtrack feature the score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, the music of Jon Batiste and features a duet performance of the 1960's Soul classic "It's All Right" (originally by The Impressions) by Celeste and Batiste. Disney and Pixar’s feature film “Soul” introduces Joe Gardner, a middle-school band teacher with a serious passion for jazz music. The story is particularly relatable to the artists behind it. For Jamie Foxx, who lends his voice to Joe, it begins with jazz. “Like Joe, I hear music in everything,” said Foxx. “When you’re a jazz artist, man, you talk a little different: ‘Hey, cat!’ I got a chance to go to a few jazz fests and meet Herbie Hancock, Chick Correa—hang out with those guys. They have a way of talking, a way of dressing—everything funnels toward their music, toward the jazz."

“On this record, I want us to bop, dance, laugh and cry together, unified as one people, while we also remember our black ancestral heroes and wield the superpowers they left us with,” Jon Batiste says of his forthcoming solo album, Hollywood Africans. The acclaimed bandleader, pianist and vocalist is the latest signee to Verve Records, who will release his major label debut on September 28.

Although sometimes called a "New Orleans clarinetist" (his Columbia album even billed him as a "Legendary Pioneer of Jazz"), in reality Alvin Batiste is an avant-garde player who does not fit easily into any classification. Under-recorded throughout his career, Batiste was a childhood friend of Ed Blackwell and he spent time in Los Angeles in 1956 playing with Ornette Coleman. However, Batiste chose the life of an educator in Louisiana…

"After last year's combination of spoken narrative and new songs on Me & the Originator, I decided to relax and go back to recording just new songs of mine, as I have on my other 15 CDs. I had new songs which were inspired by the grooves of Little Junior Parker, Jimmy McCracklin, Slim Harpo, Booker T and the MGs, and many others. I divided the songs between blues and other roots forms, and as always I wrote about real life issues, both at home and in public. If you listen carefully, you'll hear what I mean!"