Age: 39
male
Jonathan Michael Batiste (born November 11, 1986) is an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, bandleader, composer, and television personality. He has recorded and performed with artists including Stevie Wonder, Prince, Willie Nelson, Lenny Kravitz, Ed Sheeran, Lana Del Rey, Roy Hargrove, Juvenile, and Mavis Staples. Batiste, with his band Stay Human, appeared nightly as bandleader and musical director on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert from 2015 to 2022. Batiste also serves as the music director of The Atlantic and the Creative Director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. In 2020, he co-composed the score for the Pixar animated film Soul, for which he received an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Grammy Award and a BAFTA Film Award (all shared with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross). Batiste has garnered 5 Grammy Awards from 14 nominations, including an Album of the Year win for his album We Are (2021). In 2023, Batiste featured in the documentary film American Symphony which records the process of Batiste composing his first symphony.
American Tragedy explores the dark underbelly of the American Dream through interconnected stories of ambition, desperation, and moral compromise. The narrative weaves together multiple perspectives—from struggling working-class families to corrupt politicians and corporate titans—to examine how systemic inequality and broken promises fuel cycles of violence and despair. At its core lies a meditation on how individual tragedies reflect larger societal failures, where the pursuit of success becomes corrupted by greed and the vulnerable are left behind. The work interrogates themes of justice, redemption, and whether the American system can truly deliver equal opportunity or if it's fundamentally rigged. Through intimate character studies and sweeping social commentary, it asks difficult questions about complicity, survival, and what it costs to maintain the illusion of the American Dream when reality tells a far grimmer story.
