I just don’t get it. Jon Batiste, deservedly, has a huge career as pianist, composer, inspirer. The prospect of his forthcoming extended residency in various formations at KOKO in London is an exciting one. But after several attempts to reach the opposite conclusion, I still have no clue why someone decided it was a good idea to “drop” Black Mozart – Batiste Piano Series Vol. 2.
The narrative from Decca is that it is part of a series which started with Beethoven Blues, and which is set to continue with two more droppings, both of them albums inspired by Thelonious Monk, in just a couple of months’ time in August. Maybe that’s the idea: a constant flow of product to shift – I see, for example, there’s an option to buy Mozart in cream white vinyl – is what has the upper hand here.
Black Mozart embroiders a series of well known themes from the composer known as "the miracle that God allowed to be born in Salzburg". And for most of the set, until Batiste arrives at the very last of them, the Andante from the C major Piano Concerto No. 21, with the track title “Gospel Andante”, what I am missing is any palpable sense of either affection for or enjoyment of Mozart.
The opening track didn’t draw me in at all. It’s the first movement allegro from the “easy” C major Piano Sonata K. 545. The message here seems to be that these scales were at some point in Batiste's life a bad dream to be endured. The whole enterprise feels pedantic, straitjacket-ish. Then follow two dissimilar re-workings of the “Rondo alla Turca”. The first slows it down and bluesifies it, the second starts off fairly straight, and then just meanders. Neither makes any case particularly strongly.
There is a quote from the opening of the Figaro overture which again sounds like a dutiful nudge rather than in any sense buzzing with excitement. “Molto” is opening of the G minor symphony No. 40 re-harmonised and that tune keeps on coming back like an obsessive fixed idea in “Molto in Cayo Hueso”.
There is one track which does stand out as worthwhile, and that is where Batiste steps away from Mozart completely and plays a tune of his own: he plays “Processional” with authenticity and real intent. Which brings back the question about the rest of the set, with the exception of that one, and of “Gospel Andante”: what were they thinking?
