Times In New Orleans

If Feeling While Playing, Felt When Heard

     

Talent is not something learned but, curiously, talent must be earned. Here, with the erstwhile young Duke of New Orleans, we see and feel the talent of a new keyboard star in the firmament of the piano's brightest stars and one that he has worked for and earned by keeping time, putting in the time and being right on time. This is not a workman, this is not a technician. Not at all. You can stack up a pile of artistes and they wouldn't equal one Batiste. This is a deep well of talent and emotion that is only beginning to be tapped. Bristling, crisp insistent, it's fresh and brand beautifully new. Listen to this and you'll know what it was like standing in Versailles the first day it was open, with the smell of fresh paint and the creak of wood settling into place but then imagine a whole series of Versailles, only in phantom form behind them as yet unborn. These will be the future works of this Batiste. Follow him and you'll find that each time he releases a new work, it's one of those artists you can invest time and money in and come away smiling - and occasionally dancing away from the grave of the vast landscape of dull and repetitive music in this increasingly unoriginal universe. If New Orleans is the musical cradle of the United States, than this is proof irrefutable that whatever the waters washed away from the 9th ward, it could not budge from these breathing streets of pure freeing music. Well played, well felt, Jonathan wears the crown and halo of his crescent city smartly. If you ever get a chance to see him playing Blackbird, buried in a mosaic of trills and runs, it will kickstart your night. Stand out track on this disc? Maybe Bowlegs, Maybe Straight No Chaser, Depends.....there's nothing on this disc that doesn't work marvelously well.