14 AUGUST 2026 (TORONTO, ON) – Multi-GRAMMY, Emmy, and Oscar winner Jon Batiste today released three new albums as part of his ongoing Batiste Piano Series: Black Mozart (Vol. 2) on Decca Records US, and two Thelonious Monk-inspired albums
— Monk Meditations (Vol. 3) and Monk Movements (Vol. 4) — both on Verve Records. Building on 2024’s Beethoven Blues (Vol. 1), the three releases expand the Batiste Piano Series to four volumes, placing Batiste in musical conversation with Mozart, Beethoven, and Thelonious Monk — while simultaneously crafting his own compositions in the process. Listen to Black Mozart HERE, Monk Meditations HERE, and Monk Movements HERE. Listen to the full Batiste Piano Series HERE.
“The Batiste Piano Series is made for people who crave quality, profoundly engaging, soul cleansing experiences when they listen to music. Real, instrumental music that will raise their vibration higher. Mozart, Monk, and Beethoven are three of a chosen few true musical geniuses of the modern world. My inspirations in this series are drawn from the greatest sources of high art and culture and gives you my distinct view of the piano and composition,” Batiste said. “I think canon of high art needs to consistently be reevaluated and expanded. This art is a really powerful expression of music that is many times put between these walls that marginalize it and limit what it can be. I am here to help liberate it and redefine it for a new era.”
Black Mozart finds Batiste reimagining Mozart’s compositions through the lens of Black American musical traditions — jazz, blues, rags, stride, and stomps — while maintaining the core essence of the classical repertoire. The project has deep roots for Batiste: as a teenager in New Orleans, he split his time between formal piano competitions by day and freewheeling jazz clubs by night. It wasn’t until he sat in with his cousin’s band, Alvin Batiste & The Jazztronauts, that he played an original piece called “Mozartin’,” which used the composer’s techniques to bridge the two worlds he was straddling. Black Mozart brings that idea to fruition more than two decades later.
Monk Meditations and Monk Movements grew out of a creative bond that dates back to Batiste’s student days at Juilliard. When he first discovered Thelonious Monk, he listened to him for a year straight — an influence felt as early as his 2006 set Live in New York: At the Rubin Museum of Art. He realized that many of the compositional ideas he thought were revolutionary, Monk had already explored — a revelation that deepened into the creative bond behind both albums.
“Monk is really the master of taking music that’s of the highest complexity and presenting it in a way where anybody can connect to it,” Batiste said. “Monk is for the children, the adults, and the connoisseur.”
Though both Monk albums are inspired by the same artist, they take different approaches. Monk Movements flips the approach of the series’ earlier volumes — rather than transforming a classical composer’s repertoire into jazz and blues, it turns Monk’s standards into contemporary classical compositions for the solo piano, thus expanding what we call “classical” or “canon.” Monk Meditations, by contrast, strips Monk’s pieces down into new-age-inflected tracks that entrance the listener for a 33-minute meditation sequence, creating the first true meditation album inspired by his music.
Batiste sees Mozart and Monk as uniquely linked across time. Both men, he notes, built on — and pushed against — the legacy of legendary predecessors: Bach for Mozart, Duke Ellington for Monk.
“I have reverence for the original works but this is more about breaking tradition with true knowledge that ultimately expands possibilities,” he said. “These are concepts that require full albums—you couldn’t possibly capture the essence in a single… Each song builds on a story being told across the album, and each album builds on the Batiste Piano Series, which captures the interconnectedness of music through time and space.”
The new installments build on the success of Beethoven Blues — Batiste’s biggest commercial release to date, which spent five consecutive weeks at #1 on Billboard’s Classical Albums chart and nine consecutive weeks at #1 on the Classical Crossover Albums chart, while marking his highest Billboard Top 200 debut. Batiste’s 2025 album, Big Money, won Best Americana Album at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards, marking the pianist’s eighth Grammy win. Beyond his work as a recording artist and performer, Batiste has also built a significant body of work as a film composer. He is next set to compose the score for Amazon MGM’s reimagining of The Thomas Crown Affair, directed by and starring Oscar winner Michael B. Jordan and set for release in theaters on March 5, 2027.
In live performance, the pianist continues his “Jon Batiste Live: A Fantastical Musical Journey” tour this fall, which includes an upcoming symphonic show with the Atlanta Pops Orchestra; international festival dates at Curaçao’s North Sea Jazz Festival and Rock in Rio; U.S. dates at Wolf Trap, the Hollywood Bowl, The Greek and more.
Black Mozart track list:
All three albums are available on exclusive color vinyl — Black Mozart on Opaque Cream, Monk Meditations on Cherry Blossom Pink, and Monk Movements on Transparent Burnt — with a limited number of signed copies remaining.
FOLLOW JON BATISTE:
