My

guest is John Batiste. He's joining us at the piano. His new solo album is called Beethoven Blues. We'll talk more after a break. This is Fresh Air. This

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at the same time that your wife was getting the bone marrow transplant, you were also writing, composing your American Symphony. And the theme of that is featured on your album Beethoven Blues. This was a piece where you wanted to bring together influences of all different kinds of music, and not just have classical music in one category and jazz in another, but bring together all forms of American music. So there's classical, there's influences of gospel and other black musics, indigenous music, folk music, classical music. And you had, you know, different types of musicians performing. Can you play the theme, which is also featured on your album, Beethoven Blues? Yes. And if you're just joining us, Jean-Baptiste is at the piano. Yes. It's really beautiful. What did you want to express with

that? That's one example of something that certainly leads to joy, but comes from deep, deep pain and an unresolved duress that our country is founded upon. many of the things that we are in debate around and the culture clashes of our time and the shift that is occurring right before our eyes in our time. And really just thinking about a theme that cuts through all that and really speaks to it at the same time, this melody. It could be a chant. It could be a prayer. It can be a hymn. It can be a war cry. It's a theme that is using the pentatonic, which is the scale that I mentioned earlier that has this sort of connection to so many of the cultures around the world. And I knew I wanted to have a sound that if I had the indigenous musicians sing it or if I had the choral players play it or if I had the slide guitar play it or if I had the violin section play it or whatever way that I wanted to orchestrate that theme, it would communicate a, a, a different layer of the story, a different part of this experience. And, um, You hear this throughout the symphony. It's a traveler's theme as well. It's moving. You know, every time we perform it, I don't imagine it being the same. I imagine it being something that molds and shifts and evolves with the ensemble and who's joining the orchestra. And the orchestra being something that is constantly evolving. It's not just a symphony orchestra. It's orchestra plus. putting this theme on the Beethoven album was something that is an ode to Beethoven in the tradition of how he transformed the symphonic tradition and brought in all of the different sounds that he brought in and the rhythmic concepts that we talked about in the melodic ubiquity of all these themes that we know and love and just thinking about this my first symphony, American symphony, being in that tradition and in a tradition of the greats who are maybe unsung, who also wrote in connection to the American experience, William Grant Steele, James Reese Europe, Florence Price, all the composers who are speaking to this over time. It's just something that is very important to me.