What has Jon Batiste been up to since his last album, 2018's Hollywood Africans? That's like asking an entire town, "What have you been up to for three years?"

For Batiste, even summing up three days is rather impossible. In that timespan, he's had an incalculable number of irons in the fire—his symphonic premiere at Carnegie Hall, leading his band Stay Human on "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert," a collaborative song with Diane Warren, and scores of other things. Still, he's found a 15-minute window for a Zoom call. Therein, the 34-year-old dynamo lovingly deems his life "a madhouse."

"It's hard to even encapsulate in one presentation of a thought," the three-time GRAMMY nominee admits to GRAMMY.com. "I'm also in the process of, while doing these things, developing other things."

This Möbius strip of a life—projects and projects and projects, blurring on a continuum—speaks to Batiste's boundless drive and work ethic. In a pandemic year, when so many lost motivation and momentum, he sped up. Not only that, he's showing the uncategorizable nature of his artistry. 

Just as he can't be summed up as a bandleader, music consultant or TV personality, on his new album WE ARE, which was released March 29, Batiste combines half a dozen styles in fresh, unhackneyed ways.

"I don't even think genre exists," he declares later in the interview. "Self-curation and the free exchange of information and content creates a lack of genre adherence. That kind of diversity and access changes listening habits and changes the way people perceive music."

This paradigm, he says, exposes and deconstructs notions of genre, which, Batiste asserts, stems from race-centric marketing prevalent in the early music business. Read on as he holds forth on that subject, his Oscar-winning work on the 2020 Pixar flick Soul and what he has in store as live performances return.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

What's been going on in your life since Hollywood Africans, up to and including the daily grind of TV and working on Soul?

I'm involved in so many different types of things that so much of my life is balancing the amount of things I have going on and maintaining artistic integrity and keeping my values intact. It's hard to even encapsulate in one presentation of a thought.

Looking at my day-to-day: I just finished working on a score last night. The day before, when I was working on that score, I did a symphonic composition for an NBA Playoffs ad, which is their official ad that's out now. We did that in a matter of three days and recorded an entire symphony orchestra. Then, before that, I was working on a song in collaboration with Diane Warren. Today, I was hosting "CBS This Morning," and I wasn't even playing music. I was the host [with] Gayle King.

Today, I'm doing "The Late Show." And then tonight, after that, I'm going to work on some things for a foundation I'm part of. This is just in the last three days, which is a microcosm of the type of madhouse that my life is and the variety and range of different things I'm part of, that I care about deeply.

This is [about] focusing on a few things that are offered to me that I care about the most in a moment. That's maybe five out of 500 opportunities to do things or be part of things. It really becomes a question of what matters most to me and what I want to put on everybody's plate at this time, and how much time I have to do it.

I'm also in the process of, while doing these things, developing other things. Developing shows and developing a symphony that I'm premiering at Carnegie Hall in May of next year that's called American Symphony. It will be my largest work to date. It's a 40-minute, four-movement symphony, and it has not only the orchestra, but a choir and marching band and guest musicians. It's a very expansive work.

I've got to mention Soul, because I really got the impression that It wasn't a writer's room guessing what that world is like. It seemed like jazz musicians were deeply involved with the film.

Oh, absolutely. You've got one of the greatest living jazz musicians being a consultant on the film—Herbie Hancock—a consultation that was from the beginning of the film. And you have Terri Lyne Carrington, one of the greatest musicians living, who also consulted on the film. I consulted on the film as well as working on the score with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

You have real jazz musicians at the helm of this thing. Roy Haynes played the drums with me on the score. I put together another multigenerational band there with real jazz musicians. Roy Haynes and Harvey Mason, Sr. on the drums, and Marcus Gilmore as well, who is Roy's grandson. Then, you have Linda Oh and Tia Fuller on the bass and saxophone, respectively.

I think it's really amazing when they have these opportunities—for whatever it is—to have a big studio use their megaphone to speak to something that is more countercultural and less mainstream. This is a great example of the power of a big studio—one of the biggest studios in the world, Disney-Pixar—to use their megaphone and speak to something. It can have a lasting impact.

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That was a big win for the jazz community. 

Yeah. Anyone who says otherwise, I think, missed the big picture. I think it's hard to look at that and not see it as a win for jazz and for culture. In particular, when I'm thinking about culture, I'm thinking about the ways that American identity and Black culture have been at odds in cinema. This movie was allowed to come through the cracks of a very marginalized history, when it comes to jazz in film.

As a journalist, I have to reckon with the word "jazz" and the periodic need to obliterate it. WE ARE has many of those elements, but when I listen to it, the word never crosses my mind. Do you even consider genre when you write?

I don't even think genre exists. I think it's a construct. The construct of genre was really created in order to help sell and organize music and to train the public to think about music in that way, in order to market it easier. 

I think that's what it was from the beginning, and then, even earlier than our modern era of genre organization, what it was was all those things and race, which created these different forms of segregation. Segregated radio stations even had colored records versus non-colored records, and all kinds of crazy shenanigans. People would have songs that were done, and there would be a white version and a Black version. As you know, the history of all the stuff we've dealt with.

Then, you'd have R&B records and rock 'n' roll, and that became a way of segregating music. You have Chuck Berry and Little Richard, and then you have Elvis and the Stones, and all these different blues musicians. Blues and R&B were really the origin of what had become known as rock 'n' roll, but because it was Black people doing it, they didn't want to call it rock 'n' roll.

It's very interesting to see the evolution of that. That's a whole other story. But it's always been a construct. We've just always accepted it. And I think the more that we look at the way things have unfolded with streaming in the early 2000s, we see how the genie popped out of the bottle when people started to pirate, stream and download music and curate it for themselves, even though that's not even what it was called back then. 

Self-curation and the free exchange of information and content creates a lack of genre adherence. That kind of diversity and access changes listening habits and changes the way people perceive music. It changes the taste of what they want from artists. We're just [now] starting to see the impact of that as the generation who grew up with streaming.

You know, my generation was the last generation in that when we were 11 and 12 years old, we didn't have it. By the time we were 13 and 14, it was taken over. It's the generation after us that grew up where that was the only thing they had. That's how they understood music consumption. There are pros and cons to it all, but it definitely was part of what is more and more exposed about genre, which is rooted in marketing and race.

When you crash together hip-hop, jazz, blues, R&B and soul, it exposes that they're all made of the same DNA.

What's totally interesting is that the more time that the construct of genre has persisted, it's created different approaches to these genres that are identifiable. You have artists that have created music to fit into a system that is a construct. And even with that being the case, the music is still not able to be separated.

I'll give you the perfect example. If you listen to what's known as smooth jazz and then listen to something from the '70s, like Grover Washington or Stanley Turrentine or post-bop music like Horace Silver or Bobby Timmons or something like that, the only thing that separates that music—besides the actual musicians—stylistically is the production concept.

Some beats, where you hear something Art Blakey might play, that could be a hip-hop beat if it was an 808 or it was sampled. It could be jazz—vice versa—if it was played on two-inch tape and recorded at Van Gelder Studios. A lot of stuff that separates genre now is largely sonic production approaches. 

I feel like that's the new innovation in music. I see a lot of people trying to break genres in how they blend sonic and production approaches.

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Jon Batiste walked into the 2022 GRAMMYs with a whopping 11 nominations, making him the most recognized artist of the evening. By the end of the night, he received five GRAMMYs for Best American Roots Performance, Best American Roots Song, Best Score Soundtrack For Visual Media, Best Music Video, and the highly coveted Album Of The Year.

In this episode of GRAMMY Rewind, watch Batiste take the stage to accept the award for Album Of The Year for his sixth studio album, We Are

Batiste began his praises by acknowledging God: "I just put my head down and work on the craft every day. I love music, he said. "I've been playing since I was a little boy. It's more than entertainment for me — it's a spiritual practice." He also thanked the "many people that went into making this album," including his grandfather, nephew, father, and executive producer, Ryan Lynn.

"This [award] is for real artists, real musicians. Let's just keep going. Be you! That's it. I love you even if I don't know you," Batiste cheered.

Press play on the video above to hear Jon Batiste's complete acceptance speech and check back to GRAMMY.com for more new episodes of GRAMMY Rewind.

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Ever since Autumn Rowe won a GRAMMY in 2022, it's been her biggest motivation. That's why the musical multi-hyphenate keeps the award nestled in her writing room — to keep her creative juices flowing.

"It reminds me that anything is possible," she says in the latest episode of Where Do You Keep Your GRAMMY?

Rowe won her first-ever career GRAMMY in 2022 with an Album Of The Year award for Jon Batiste's We Are. "It was very stressful," she recalls with a laugh.

"Right before they announced Album Of The Year, the pressure started getting to me," Rowe explains. "Album Of The Year is the biggest possible award you can win. So, I'm like, 'We didn't win any of these [categories], how are we going to win the biggest award?"

The win also taught her one unforgettable, valuable lesson: "We matter. The music matters. Everything matters. We just have to create it. If there isn't space for it, we have to make space for it. Don't wait for something to open."

Rowe says she grew up "super dirt poor" and never even had the opportunity to watch the awards ceremony on television. "To be a GRAMMY winner means it is possible for everyone," she declares.

Press play on the video above to learn more about the backstory of Autumn Rowe's Album Of The Year award, and remember to check back to GRAMMY.com for more new episodes of Where Do You Keep Your GRAMMY?

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At the 2024 Oscars on March 10, five-time GRAMMY winner and 20-time nominee Jon Batiste took the stage for a scintillating version of his co-write with Dan Wilson, "It Never Went Away."

For said performance, the multimedia phenom kept the proceedings spare and probing, letting his iridescent piano and singular pipes do the heavy lifting. Watch it above.

"It never went away/Every time I see your face," Batiste sang, in a commensurately understated, off-white stage outfit and backdrop. "The feeling's just the same/ It's never goin' away."

"It Never Went Away" was featured in the acclaimed 2023 documentary American Symphony, about his and his wife author Suleika Jaouad's personal and creative development — under the spectre of cancer and an impending debut at Carnegie Hall, of the symphony of the same name.

"It was very complicated from a producing point of view to navigate the puzzle of Jon's insane life, and then trying to find our way into the hospital, and then back out again, and back in again," American Symphony director Matthew Heineman said last year at a live interview covered by GRAMMY.com.

In the same conversation Heineman aptly described the overall process as reflecting "the symphony of life that we witnessed over the past year."

Keep checking this space for more updates on the 2024 Oscars — including GRAMMY winners and nominees who are featured during the big night!

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Tonight, the red carpet becomes a runway that blends the art of fashion with the magic of cinema and sound. 

The intersection of music and film has never been more luminous than at this year's Oscars, where numerous GRAMMY-winning artists including Billie Eilish, Jon Batiste, and Bradley Cooper are not just attending but are nominated for their contributions to the silver screen. 

From enchanting melodies that tugged at our heartstrings to groundbreaking scores that redefined movie moments, these artists have already left an indelible mark on the music industry. Tonight, they grace the Oscars red carpet, showcasing not only their unparalleled talent but also their unique fashion sensibilities. 

Take a closer look at these multifaceted talents and their journey from the GRAMMYs to the 2024 Oscars.

Billie Eilish

Nominated for: Best Original Song, "What Was I Made For?" from Barbie

Billie Eilish, the alt-pop sensation with nine GRAMMY wins, brings her unique style to the Oscars wearing a tweed schoolgirl look from Chanel. At this year's Academy Awards, Eilish is nominated for the hauntingly beautiful "What Was I Made For?" [From The Motion Picture *Barbie*], the same track that won two GRAMMYs, for Song Of The Year and Best Song Written For Visual Media, at the 2024 GRAMMYs.

*Photo: JC Olivera/Getty Images*

Finneas O'Connell

Nominated for: Best Original Song, "What Was I Made For?" with Billie Eilish

Finneas O'Connell, the mind behind many of sister Billie Eilish’s hits and a 10-time GRAMMY winner in his own right, appears tonight in an ensemble that's as sleek as his production style. Nominated for the poignant "What Was I Made For?," he exudes confidence and creativity, showcasing the depth of his artistic vision.

*Photo: JC Olivera/Getty Images*

Jon Batiste

Nominated for: Best Original Song, "It Never Went Away" from American Symphony

Jon Batiste, a vision of grace on the red carpet in a monochromatic burgundy suit, brings the same passion to his music that won him five GRAMMYs and 19 nominations, including his Album Of The Year win for 2021's We Are. 

Tonight, he's recognized for his soul-stirring "It Never Went Away", a testament to his versatility and depth as an artist. He won his first Oscar in 2021 for Best Original Score with Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor for their work together on Pixar's Soul.

*Photo:* Kevin Mazur/Getty Images

Mark Ronson

**Nominated for: Best Original Song, "I'm Just Ken" [From The Motion Picture Barbie]

Mark Ronson, the GRAMMY-winning producer known for hits like "Uptown Funk" and his work on Amy Winehouse's seminal Back to Black, brings well-suited sophistication to the red carpet. As an eight time GRAMMY winner, Ronson won his first Oscar award for Best Original Song in 2021 for "Shallow" for A Star is Born starring Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper.

***Photo: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images***

Ludwig Göransson

Nominated for: Best Original Score, Oppenheimer

Ludwig Göransson, took home the Oscar for Best Original Score with a win for Oppenheimer. Known for his innovative soundscapes, Göransson's attire tonight — a satin-lapel tuxedo with wide pants and Cartier jewels — is a harmonious blend of classic and contemporary, much like his music.

*Photo: John Shearer/WireImage/Getty Images*

Bradley Cooper

Nominated for: Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay, Maestro

Bradley Cooper, presents a masterclass in red carpet fashion in a double-breasted tie-less tux with turquoise buttons and boot cut suit pants. A two-time GRAMMY winner for A Star Is Born in 2019, Cooper's transformation into Leonard Bernstein in Maestro is both a critical and stylistic triumph. Tonight, his attire is as meticulously curated as his performance, with a nod to the classical elegance befitting one of the most legendary conductors of all-time.

***Photo: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images***

Danielle Brooks

Nominated for: Best Supporting Actress, The Color Purple

Danielle Brooks dazzles in a black corseted gown with silver embellishments, a diamond necklace, and silver toned jewelry that speaks to her vibrant and powerful portrayal of Sofia in The Color Purple. A GRAMMY winner in 2017 for Best Musical Theater Album for her work in the Broadway revival, Brooks now shines on Oscars Sunday in an ensemble that is a tribute to Sofia's strength, resilience, and grace.

*Photo: Mike Coppola/Getty Images*

Diane Warren

Nominated for: Best Original Song, "The Fire Inside" from Flamin' Hot

Diane Warren, whose pen has graced many an iconic ballad, steps onto the red carpet in a "Flamin' Hot" look that echoes her lyrical genius. Nominated once again for her songwriting prowess, Warren's attire tonight is a nod to the fiery Becky G track she's nominated for tonight. 

Warren has received 15 GRAMMY nominations through her career and a win for "Because You Loved Me" (Celine Dion, from Up, Close and Personal) which took home Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or for Television in 1997. 

*Photo:* Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images

Ariana Grande

Ariana Grande stepped onto the red carpet just days after the release of her album Eternal Sunshine in a custom Glinda-pink Giambattista Valli gown. Grande presented awards for Best Original Song and Best Original Score with Wicked co-star, Cynthia Erivo at the 2024 Oscars.

*Photo: Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images* 

Cynthia Erivo

Cynthia Erivo graced the red carpet in an emerald green Louis Vuitton look with voluminous leather ruffles. Erivo presented awards for Best Original Song and Best Original Score with Wicked co-star, Ariana Grande at the 2024 Oscars. 

*Photo: Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images*

Hailey Steinfeld

Nominated: Best Animated Feature, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Hailey Steinfeld showed up to the 2024 Oscars ready to put on a show. The actress and singer wore a couture Elie Saab gown from the Spring/Summer 2024 collection in light blue with butterfly cape sleeves and a pleated skirt, accentuated by metallic appliqués adorning the bodice and wrists of the sleeves.

*Photo: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic/GettyImages *

Tia Carrere

Tia Carrere attends the 2024 Oscars red carpet. Carrere is a two-time GRAMMY winner for Best Hawaiian Music Album.

***Photo: Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images***

Slash

Slash, the lead guitarist for Guns N' Roses assisted Ryan Gosling and Mark Ronson with a performance of 'I'm Just Ken' at the 2024 Oscars. 

*Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic*

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