Jon Batiste is running late, but he’s got a pretty good excuse. He has been hanging out with Dick Van Dyke, singing and playing tunes. Van Dyke is 100 years old, so GQ can wait half an hour. “I’ve got to know Dick over the years, and any time I’m in LA, I go to his house,” Batiste explains. “We sit and we tell stories, and we play music and he sings. He got up today and was dancing. It’s hard to leave that environment.”
It’s a testament to the diversity of Batiste’s musical Rolodex that when I ask him to name a favourite from his list of collaborators, he picks gonzo rap visionary and fellow New Orleanian Lil Wayne. “We talked about starting a band together,” he says. “We may still, at some point.”
Neither Weezy nor Van Dyke will appear at the Jon Batiste World Festival, but in all other respects, the pianist’s upcoming London residency is another illustration of his multifaceted, collaborative approach. Co-curated with long-time associate Michael Mwenso, and put together with the local wing of the New Orleans–New York–London musical community Batiste has been building for two decades, it will consist of four themed nights at Camden venue Koko, each highlighting a different part of his creative toolbox.
There will be a symphonic work backed by a full orchestra, and an all-request evening of deep cuts from his nine-album back catalogue. He’ll bring out “a lot of renowned voices, surprise guests, and people who are very close to me in terms of my years going to London,” he says. The last night is a full rendition of his Oscar-winning soundtrack to the Pixar film Soul, along with some of the jazz that inspired it (Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Nina Simone).
Soul was Batiste’s first film score. His next will take shape in London. On his off days either side of the residency, he’ll work with his orchestra to score a remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, directed by and starring Michael B Jordan and due for release next year.
“Music is such a powerful force in the film,” Batiste says. “The movie has three acts that could be three completely different films, and [Jordan] masterfully weaves them together in a way that the score is just… it’s such a driver.”
The soundtrack will be another entry in a body of work that is rooted in the New Orleans jazz world and has expanded to include elements of classical, soul, folk, funk, gospel and blues. It will be preceded by three more editions of his Batiste Piano Series, including a jazz reimagining of Mozart and a new-age meditation record inspired by Thelonious Monk. Some artists aspire to do one thing really well. Batiste, a multi-Grammy-winning graduate of New York’s Juilliard music school, does lots of things really well. You suspect if he took a fancy to rock or techno, he’d manage a nomination or two in those genres as well.
Not that he buys into anything as limiting as genre. “When people lock themselves into silos of dogma about music, it’s the same with our political system, the way people have become dogmatic about representing a very binary view about human life and culture,” he says. “I don’t subscribe to that at all.”
Jon Batiste will be at GQ Heroes in Oxfordshire, from 30 June-2 July 2026. For more information and tickets, visit GQHeroes.com.
