Jazz has a tradition that has enriched the culture in America. The intellectualism of it does nothing but make you think on a higher level and make you a better person if you engage in the music and let it do what it does when it is played at its highest level.

Jon Batiste

I was raised in the Catholic Church, and for me, the thought in the Bible and Christianity, and the spirit within that, is one of the guiding principles in my life.

Jon Batiste

In a live performance, it's a collaboration with the audience; you ride the ebb and flow of the crowd's energy. On television, you don't have that.

Jon Batiste

I'm from Kenner, Louisiana, where music is played for every occasion in life. There's music for being born, there's music for dying... It's just natural. Families get really good because they play a lot together.

Jon Batiste

The subway in New York is a great social experiment; there are so many races and ways of life sitting together on each car.

Jon Batiste

With so many ways to communicate at our disposal, we must not forget the transformative power of a live music experience and genuine human exchange.

Jon Batiste

Technology is something you have to embrace because technology is part of our generation. Digital natives, for instance, are people who grew up in a world that always had the Internet and who always had smartphones. Millennials aren't too far behind: my generation of people, who were in the mix of the Internet when it first came out.

Jon Batiste

In such a globally connected world, musicians now have the unique opportunity to express all of the cultural 'mash ups' we are experiencing these days. Akin to the blend of cultures that occurred in early 20th-century New Orleans that led to the birth of jazz, I believe that the world has reached a similar cultural turning point.

Jon Batiste

The beauty of jazz is that it can accommodate all styles. You can take jazz and put rock in it, and it's still jazz.

Jon Batiste

The Batiste family is a large musical family in Louisiana, out in New Orleans. People go to New Orleans, and if they go to any club, four days out of the week I guarantee you that you will find a Batiste playing in the ensemble.

Jon Batiste

I played with Prince in 2010... the America tour. The one with Misty Copeland dancing on top of the piano! But Prince played the piano on that song. But I played two dates with him on that tour. When we played the gig, every couple of songs, Prince would change his clothes.

Jon Batiste

In the process of them developing this instrument, I've been playing the melodica in the style I would like the harmoniboard to be played, which is a mix between a harmonica and keyboard. I play with trumpet style techniques. I really like the mobility of being able to step off the piano and bring the music to the audience.

Jon Batiste

It's not like the old competition that you had between Leno and Letterman. It's a friendly competition between Fallon and Stephen.

Jon Batiste

When the Beatles wrote 'Paperback Writer,' it couldn't have been the same old thing. You can hear so many influences in it, from the blues to Bach, and it's not just verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge chorus. They start off singing a cappella, almost like a Bach chorale, and the song goes into this bluesy guitar riff.

Jon Batiste

I think it's important for people to stay human and remember that genuine human connection is more fulfilling than anything that technology has to offer. We all have it within us, and music is something that can bring that out of us.

Jon Batiste

Earliest musical memory is probably being scared stiff with my family's band as a youngster on stage playing the conga drums.

Jon Batiste

I'm from New Orleans, which is all about direct engagement out in the street with all the parades and Mardi Gras Indians and jazz funerals. I'm trying to take that and put it into my generation, a group that doesn't have enough joy and celebration in their lives.

Jon Batiste

There were so many people after that first 'Colbert Report' interview that were impressed by the synergy we had during the interview. People everywhere we'd go would say, 'You should be the bandleader; it would be great for jazz. It would be great for the music.' But I was completely against it.

Jon Batiste

My whole way of looking at entertainment and audience engagement - and my ability to go from one genre to another - comes from my experience in New Orleans.

Jon Batiste

Early American music and early folk music, before the record became popular and before there were pop stars and before there were venues made to present music where people bought tickets, people played music in the community, and it was much more part of a fabric of everyday life. I call that music 'root music.'

Jon Batiste

Whatever I do with music, I try to make it align deeply with the values and principles of who I am and what I believe the purpose of my life is.

Jon Batiste