Jon Batiste will help open the festivities at Super Bowl LIX in his native New Orleans on February 9th, 2025 with a performance of the national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner”. Batiste announced the Super Bowl appearance via social media on Thanksgiving day alongside a simple but poignant message: “Music is the ultimate unifier.”
Other local entertainers added to the docket for Super Bowl LIX programming include Trombone Shorty and Lauren Daigle (singing “America the Beautiful) and Ledisi (singing “Lift Every Voice and Sing”, colloquially known as the Black National Anthem).
The addition of these Louisiana natives to the entertainer lineup at Super Bowl LIX is notable in the wake of this fall’s announcement that California rapper Kendrick Lamar would headline the game’s high-profile Halftime Show—and the subsequent backlash from fans and artists alike over the fact that iconic NOLA rapper Lil Wayne wasn’t offered the gig.
Lil Wayne said in a post on social media at the time that not being offered the New Orleans Super Bowl Halftime Show “broke” him. Last week, Lamar commented on the controversy on his surprise new LP, GNX. The album’s opening track, “wacced out murals”, includes the lines, “Used to bump Tha Carter III, I held my Rollie chain proud / Irony, I think my hard work let Lil Wayne down.”
Born into a long line of Louisiana musicians, Jon Batiste trained as a classical pianist and received both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in piano from New York’s Juilliard School. He now works with students and faculty as an inaugural Juilliard Creative Associate, as well as serving on the Juilliard board. Additionally, Batiste is on the Board of Trustees at Carnegie Hall as an Artist Trustee.
He returned to his classical roots in the 2021-22 season when he curated a multi-concert “Perspectives” series at New York’s Carnegie Hall. This was crowned by the world premiere of his “American Symphony” (2022), a Carnegie Hall commission, on the venue’s main stage. A critically acclaimed documentary of the same name chronicling Batiste’s life during his composition of “American Symphony” was released on Netflix in 2023.
His latest album, Beethoven Blues, blends Beethoven’s classical compositions with the spirit of the blues to produce a sound that’s at once familiar and innovative. The album debuted in the No. 1 spot on Billboard‘s Classical Albums chart.
Jon Batiste – Für Elise – Batiste (Official Music Video)
Beethoven Blues follows the success of Batiste’s two most recent studio albums, 2021’s Album of the Year Grammy-winning WE ARE and 2023’s Album of the Year Grammy-nominated World Music Radio, both of which showcase the breadth of his musicianship. Most recently, Jon Batiste contributed the innovative score for Jason Reitman’s film Saturday Night, which depicts the chaotic 90 minutes leading up to the first broadcast of Saturday Night Live in 1975. Batiste composed and produced the music live on the soundstage in front of the cast and crew to capture the intensity and unpredictability of the iconic show’s debut episode.
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