Mozart is dismantled on the solo piano. And it can’t be killed.
The first thing you notice: This Mozart has been annoying for a while now. Because what Jon Batiste brings out beautifully on BLACK MOZART and all alone with his piano is the childlike naivety of most of the melodies – and how dead they have been played over the centuries. But the Oscar and Grammy winner doesn’t destroy the originals, he flatters them, misleads them and sometimes even makes fun of them a little.
He demonstrates the simplicity of many well-known melodies with absolute relish, only to immediately take them apart and reassemble them into completely different contexts. Maybe it’s misleading, but in the first edition of his “Batiste Piano Series” the multi-talented artist, who has already worked with Alicia Keys, ASAP Rocky, Willie Nelson and Prince, did not treat Beethoven so disrespectfully.
But it’s also like this: When Batiste sets out on one of his convoluted exploratory tours, he finds a little disharmony here, a little buried euphony there, he explores striking similarities to classical patterns from jazz and pop, he sometimes loses himself, tells a little anecdote, but just when you’re no longer thinking about old Mozart, he suddenly jumps right back in as if nothing had happened. That probably means that the old hit songs just can’t be killed.