Description
Jon Batiste – Anatomy Of Angels – Vinyl Record
Jon Batiste’s Anatomy of Angels: Live at the Village Vanguard, released in August 2019, is a deeply expressive and spiritually resonant live jazz album that captures the acclaimed pianist, composer, and bandleader in his element: in front of a live audience, improvising freely, and pushing the boundaries of modern jazz while rooted in its deepest traditions. Recorded during a run of performances at the historic Village Vanguard in New York City—a venue synonymous with jazz innovation and intimacy—Anatomy of Angels is more than just a document of a gig. It’s a musical statement about lineage, emotion, and transcendence.
Batiste, already widely recognized at the time for his charismatic presence as the bandleader of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and his genre-defying earlier projects, strips away the variety show persona here to fully inhabit his identity as a serious jazz artist. What’s striking about the album is its emotional range and the way Batiste uses the live format to explore the sacred qualities of improvisation. The record is intimate yet expansive, reverent yet exploratory—a spiritual journey conveyed through a trio of formats: solo piano, small combo, and a culminating sextet with vocal textures.
The album opens with two solo piano improvisations, “Creative” and “Dusk Train to Doha”, which immediately set the tone for the album’s spiritual and introspective character. Batiste’s playing here is deeply lyrical, blending gospel harmonies, classical flourishes, and the blues with a sense of meditative grace. These aren’t technical showpieces so much as conversations—quiet, searching, emotionally raw. There’s space in his phrasing, a sensitivity to silence and resonance that recalls pianists like Bill Evans or Keith Jarrett but filtered through Batiste’s unique rhythmic and cultural sensibility, which is strongly rooted in New Orleans traditions.
The centerpiece of the album is the title track, “Anatomy of Angels”, a nearly 12-minute suite that expands into full sextet territory. Featuring bassist Philip Kuehn, drummer Joe Saylor, trumpeter Giveton Gelin, and saxophonists Patrick Bartley and Jon Lampley, the ensemble balances tight, sophisticated interplay with a powerful sense of openness. The composition is both melancholic and uplifting, with a melodic arc that builds toward a celestial climax. It evokes a spiritual energy akin to John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme—not in its exact form or intensity, but in its sense of higher purpose, its reverence for the transcendent potential of music. Batiste’s piano leads with gentle authority, allowing the horns to cry, question, and ascend. The addition of vocal textures, sung wordlessly by Batiste and others in the ensemble, reinforces the sacred quality of the music—it’s jazz as prayer, jazz as offering.
Two more pieces—“The Very Thought of You” and “Is It Over”—add to the album’s emotional depth. “The Very Thought of You,” a standard, is delivered with extraordinary tenderness, showing Batiste’s ability to reinterpret the Great American Songbook with subtlety and emotional clarity, not just technical skill. “Is It Over” closes the album with a sense of bittersweet resolution, offering an elegiac, almost hymnal final gesture. It’s reflective without being resigned—a fitting conclusion to a set that began with questions and wonder.
What makes Anatomy of Angels especially powerful is that it exists at the intersection of tradition and innovation, structure and freedom. Batiste isn’t interested in showing off or reinventing jazz with some bombastic new concept; he’s focused on honoring its emotional core, channeling its history through deeply personal expression. His command of dynamics, space, and melodic development shows a profound understanding of the music’s roots in both African American spirituality and classical form. And by recording it live at the Village Vanguard—a venue where so many jazz giants have created defining works—Batiste connects himself with a living legacy, not to mimic it, but to contribute something honest and new.
In the context of Batiste’s broader career, Anatomy of Angels is a crucial album. It predates his Grammy-winning We Are (2021) and his Oscar-winning Soul score, and it highlights the depth of his musical foundation before his major crossover success. If We Are is a joyous, genre-blending celebration of identity and culture, Anatomy of Angels is the introspective core beneath it—a moment of quiet reflection before the spotlight. It reveals Batiste as an artist who can command an orchestra, compose for film, and dazzle on national TV, but who ultimately remains a jazz musician at heart, deeply committed to the spiritual and communal dimensions of sound.
Brand new, never played and still sealed in the factory plastic
Track Listing
Creative
Dusk Train To Doha
The Very Thought Of You
Round Midnight
Anatomy Of Angels
