Jon Batiste transmits a joyful ‘World Music Radio’ at the Orpheum
After netting five Grammy Awards (including album of the year), serving as bandleader on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” and melding genres the world over, sometimes it seems like there’s nothing Jon Batiste can’t do. Except, perhaps, leave the stage a moment before he has to.
Fans gathered at the Orpheum Theatre Saturday night for the Louisiana artist’s “Uneasy Tour” certainly got their money’s worth, as Batiste tacked song after song onto his encore, politely creeping as close to curfew as allowed. Boasting a goal of “purifying the airwaves for the people,” the tour tapped Batiste’s effortless joie de vivre to provide his audience with an automatic attitude adjustment.
A crooning model of ebullience, Batiste’s unbridled positivity might be the single unifying element across his styleswirling discography. His prominent track “I Need You” emphasizes on the chorus, “In this world with a lot of problems/All we need is a little loving.” It’s a sentiment Batiste latched onto as he dispatched heart-swelling optimism and dynamic excerpts from his much-lauded 2021 record, “We Are,” and last year’s ambitious offering, “World Music Radio.”
Slipping into an ineffable space between jazz, soul, pop, roots, and R&B, the virtuoso cycled through no fewer than five different instruments — and that’s not even counting the sampler he tapped to heighten danceable number “Worship” into a miniature rave, playing DJ under a rainbow of twirling stage lights. In a more stripped-down moment, Batiste displayed his Juilliard-honed chops at the piano with a solo medley that shifted between Sam Cooke’s “Bring It on Home to Me,” Taylor Swift’s “Sweet Nothing,” and a wondrous slice of “Pure Imagination,” culminating in his own healing ballad “Butterfly.”
Batiste’s deep-seated bandleader instincts even surfaced to guide the balcony and orchestra through two simultaneous sing-alongs, quickening the choruses or softening voices through hand gestures. (Otherwise, his hands remained in the gesture for “I love you,” one thumb removed from “rock on.”) As the final curtain loomed, the band launched into an instrumental extravaganza that saw Batiste swap his melodica for time behind the drum kit to cover “When the Saints Go Marching In” as a nod to his New Orleans roots.
“I’m not used to curfews, I just play,” he explained. “It’s not just entertainment, it’s spiritual for us, you see?”
Given Batiste’s Christian background, his word choice carries extra weight, especially in an era where fans frequently deify their favorite acts by exalting select concerts as “spiritual experiences.” Often the exaggeration is intended as little more than comedy, but the repetition has diminished the term’s significance nonetheless.
Yet in the context of Batiste’s radical joy, it’s no hyperbole to say his Boston show was indeed spiritual — or at the very least, beautifully life-affirming. Consider these airwaves thoroughly purified.