Review: Jon Batiste and the Philadelphia Orchestra, Friday, Aug. 22, 2025 at Saratoga Performing Arts Center

Happy multitudes united at Saratoga Performing Arts Center in lively musical celebration Friday, drawn by a strong sense of occasion and warmed in the sentiment and skill of gleaming-suited star Jon Batiste.

Onstage the Philadelphia Orchestra wrapped around pianist-singer Batiste and the band he’ll take on tour from Kansas City next week to Milan in October.

In the seats and on the hill, an extraordinarily large, enthusiastic and younger-skewing crowd for an orchestra event sat or, often, stood in the unanimous, joyous adulation only the most beloved artists and entertainers earn.

Batiste glowed in his unprecedented opportunity to perform in a gloriously expansive orchestral context. The two-set show included new tunes from “Big Money,” his ninth album that hit Friday morning, soul classics, and the sweet sounds of his New Orleans home.

He played and sang from the heart, as he told us while introducing a love song for his wife that they’d met and become a couple in Saratoga; he often pointed to friends and family in the audience, smiling wide.

Every inch the star, he had a confidently relaxed way when he spoke but became a charismatic, kinetic whirlwind when the songs revved or a sensitive interpreter of deep feelings in slower numbers. He held the eye in a spangled suit likely visible in Montreal. 

A blues tango instrumental opened, the orchestra injecting abrupt percussion and soaring brass into the flow Batiste set at the piano. Un-classical-concert-like whoops rewarded him at the end.

In “Lonely Avenue,” recorded with Randy Newman for his new album, Batiste sang in Ray Charles’s staccato phrasing and an agile falsetto, going plaintive at the piano as the orchestra paused. He sang in sync with his piano, compressing and relaxing the beat; then, urging “sing it from your soul,” he got a good singalong. Citing his video-game childhood, he led an affectionate “Green Hill Zone” tribute to “Sonic the Hedgehog” before using the piano again as transition into “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Obligatory for New Orleans musicians, this felt cliche-free as Batiste tugged at the beat, turned the chords inside out and brought in the crowd to sing, stand and clap. He jumped up, grabbed a red melodica and scaled back the coda, with crowd voices.

He got the audience doing whatever he wanted, listening in quiet places, and going upbeat, too; jumping, singing, clapping (mostly…) on the one, applauding slick spin moves. 

Here’s the thing: Just as he now does better dance moves in “Freedom” than on the exuberant video, Batiste has evolved as pianist and singer since we all saw him on “The Late Show.” He commanded lovely lyricism or explosive, rapid power on the keys; he sang nuanced phrasing or emotional fire. Best of all, his enthusiasm invited the audience aboard a love-train of sound and spirit.

In “Georgia On My Mind,” he again dug Ray Charles with hesitation cadences in a dynamic vocal the orchestra paralleled to grand perfection, sounding bluesy and brassy.

Singer Desiree Washington came on to add her alto to Batiste’s falsetto in “Lean On My Love,” second song from his “Big Money” album in the show. Bassist Nick Clark, drummer Alvin Ford and guitarist/keyboardist Max Townsley joined, too. 

They gave “Raindance” an upbeat punch, riding stop-and-go riffs in energetic precision. They held the momentum in Jackie Wilson’s hit “Higher and Higher” as the crowd jumped to its feet. They stayed up in the exuberant “Freedom” with a big orchestra finish. After the cautionary title track from the new album, Batiste closed the first set with melodica and voice.

“Prosecco time,” declared a woman heading for the bar.

“Petrichor” launched the second set, angrily warning of environmental apocalypse. Batiste began the pleading “I Need You” with quiet humming then revved it at the piano before the band joined. Torchy saxophone punctuated the hopeful “We Are” before Stockhausen-like orchestral anguish cued the dramatic ballad “Cry,” low strings simmering.

Bill Withers’s somber “Ain’t No Sunshine” got big recognition applause but, like “Higher and Higher,” felt a bit cramped; brief as the original hit. In “Wonderful World,” the orchestra set a quiet mood, the woman ahead of me wiping her eyes, especially when Batiste swept his arm to include the whole audience, singing “I love you.” 

That’s the other thing: Listeners respond strongly to Batiste, recognizing he means the music, loves and lives it.

Citing Saratoga as where he met his Saratoga resident wife Suleika Jaouad, he both sang his love for her and celebrated New Orleans in a seamless, happy suite. The love song “Butterfly” opened and ended a flow through “Lil Liza Jane,” “Blueberry Hill,” “Big Chief,” something with the same chords as “Softly As in a Morning Sunrise,” though that wasn’t it, “Tipitina” and “I Love You So.”

Then he dismissed the orchestra and led his band through the amphitheater and into the crowd, medley-ing jazz and pop tunes including “Killing Me Softly With His Song” and “A Night in Tunisia.”

As they reached the lawn outside the cameras’ reach, the screens went dark. The music seemed to come from everywhere; Batiste and company, anywhere. Everybody milled around in a happy throng smiling and clapping, feeling part of something wonderful.

The audience included fans of every kind of music. Goth geezers, Hawaiian shirted suburban beach- and golf-clad folks, the oh-so-hip and the too-hip-to-care, posh picnickers and jaunty jazz-bos all mingled easily. A slick-suited, short, slim gent in cowboy boots (no tie) sat in a good seat near a whatever-gender Truman Capote look-alike. Mostly it comprised younger people than usually attend orchestra events; exceeding that for similarly youth-appealing Icelandic smooth-jazz singer Laufey who fronted the Philadelphians on Aug. 9.

The Philadelphians close tonight with “Back to the Future In Concert.”