With so many ways to communicate at our disposal, we must not forget the transformative power of a live music experience and genuine human exchange.
I was raised in the Catholic Church, and for me, the thought in the Bible and Christianity, and the spirit within that, is one of the guiding principles in my life.
The subway in New York is a great social experiment; there are so many races and ways of life sitting together on each car.
In a live performance, it's a collaboration with the audience; you ride the ebb and flow of the crowd's energy. On television, you don't have that.
The beauty of jazz is that it can accommodate all styles. You can take jazz and put rock in it, and it's still jazz.
Jazz has a tradition that has enriched the culture in America. The intellectualism of it does nothing but make you think on a higher level and make you a better person if you engage in the music and let it do what it does when it is played at its highest level.
Music is a tool that brings people together.
When the Beatles wrote 'Paperback Writer,' it couldn't have been the same old thing. You can hear so many influences in it, from the blues to Bach, and it's not just verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge chorus. They start off singing a cappella, almost like a Bach chorale, and the song goes into this bluesy guitar riff.
I have seven uncles, and my dad played bass, they had a band together, that was the family band. And of course as the cousins got older, including myself, we joined a family band. All the cousins played. That's my heritage.
I'm from Kenner, Louisiana, where music is played for every occasion in life. There's music for being born, there's music for dying... It's just natural. Families get really good because they play a lot together.
My sense of style is influenced by how I feel. I want to express myself because they see you before they hear you. You want to come on stage, and what you look like should represent the song you are playing or the set you are about to play or the message in your music.
Earliest musical memory is probably being scared stiff with my family's band as a youngster on stage playing the conga drums.
Technology is something you have to embrace because technology is part of our generation. Digital natives, for instance, are people who grew up in a world that always had the Internet and who always had smartphones. Millennials aren't too far behind: my generation of people, who were in the mix of the Internet when it first came out.
Jazz can accommodate so many things. Jazz is like the universe: it's been expanding since its creation, and it's connected to everything.
I'm from New Orleans, which is all about direct engagement out in the street with all the parades and Mardi Gras Indians and jazz funerals. I'm trying to take that and put it into my generation, a group that doesn't have enough joy and celebration in their lives.
The Batiste family is a large musical family in Louisiana, out in New Orleans. People go to New Orleans, and if they go to any club, four days out of the week I guarantee you that you will find a Batiste playing in the ensemble.
I still consider myself to be introverted, but everyone has a side of themselves that is amplified. Performers have to learn to tap into that, even if it's not natural.
You can't hate the person next to you when you're laughing and dancing together.
Whatever I do with music, I try to make it align deeply with the values and principles of who I am and what I believe the purpose of my life is.
I played with Prince in 2010... the America tour. The one with Misty Copeland dancing on top of the piano! But Prince played the piano on that song. But I played two dates with him on that tour. When we played the gig, every couple of songs, Prince would change his clothes.
