Black Mozart (Batiste Piano Series, Vol. 2)

Mozart Was Never a “Serious Person”

When I learned piano as a kid, my teacher placed Mozart on a shrine.

The tone had to be clean, the ornaments elegant, and you were absolutely forbidden from adding anything of your own. The opening “do-mi-sol-mi” of K. 545 sounded identical in every practice room in Taiwan — as uniform as schoolchildren lined up in formation.

But here’s the thing: Mozart himself was a prankster who loved to improvise and slipped jokes into his music. His ornaments were originally blank spaces left for performers to fill in on the spot. His variation sets were literally him “playing around” with other people’s tunes.

What Jon Batiste does on Black Mozart can be summed up in one sentence: he takes Mozart down from the shrine and brings him to a New Orleans bar for a drink.

A Conversation Recorded in a Single Day

This is the second installment of the Batiste Piano Series. The first was 2024’s Beethoven Blues; this time it’s Mozart’s turn.

Ten tracks, thirty-five minutes, all solo piano. Batiste says he had played Beethoven half his life and knew it with his eyes closed; but Mozart was territory he was entering for the first time — on recording day he spread out the scores, played through each theme once, and improvised his response on the spot, finishing the whole album in a single day.

The opener “Facile-Batiste” takes a knife to the first movement of K. 545: for a few seconds you still recognize that “do-mi-sol-mi,” and the next second it slides into a blues bend — the Viennese salon instantly becomes the American South of the 1920s.

The Two Lives of Twinkle Twinkle

My favorites are the twins, “Shine” and “Twinkle.”

They come from the same song — Mozart’s twelve variations K. 265 on a French folksong, the tune the whole world knows as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Batiste gives one melody two lives: one that shines, one that twinkles, one in daylight, one deep at night.

And “Country Zart” is bolder still: it plugs the Marriage of Figaro Overture into the driving pulse of Black country music. Before the opera-house chandelier stops swaying, you’re already out on the highway.

Why “Black Mozart”

The title will surely raise some eyebrows. But Batiste is disarmingly frank about it: as a teenager in New Orleans he spent his days in classical piano competitions and his nights in jazz clubs, until he heard jazz clarinet master Alvin Batiste — a distant cousin — blow a beloved Mozart melody as a twelve-bar blues in his cousin’s band. That’s when he understood: Mozart never belonged to one skin color or one social class.

He argues that the great classical canon — Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Bach — has reached the point where it needs “updating.” Not out of disrespect, but precisely out of reverence: every musical tradition since deserves its conversation with the canon. The blues has something to say. Jazz has something to say. Gospel has something to say.

The closing “Gospel Andante” is the period at the end of that belief: andante tempo, gospel harmony, like a congregation lingering at the church door after the service, singing one more chorus because nobody wants to leave.

By the Way: He Released Three Albums That Day

On August 14, 2026, Batiste actually released three Piano Series albums at once: this Black Mozart (Vol. 2, on Decca), plus two tributes to Thelonious Monk — Monk Meditations (Vol. 3) and Monk Movements (Vol. 4), both on Verve.

One man, one piano: an afternoon chatting with Mozart, then turning around to chat with Monk. That kind of stamina — well, eight Grammys don’t win themselves.

A Small Joy for Taiwan Listeners

On May 31 this year, Batiste played his very first Taiwan recital at Weiwuying in Kaohsiung. If you were there and felt the magic of his live improvisation, this album is a way to carry that evening home in your pocket.

And if you missed it — no harm done. Press play, and Mozart meets New Orleans right in your living room.