Jon Batiste

“It’s got to be an experience. It can’t be something that’s like a museum piece.”

Jon Batiste spent his 33rd birthday playing an intimate, private concert with his band in the round while Jazz Night in America captured the show.

Along with two other recommended albums — a total of six. (We’re feeling generous.)

Jon Batiste was a highly regarded but not especially famous jazz pianist when he first recorded a tune called “Creative,” on his 2013 album Jazz is Now.

Along with saxophonist Michaël Attias and trombonist Joe Fiedler.

From the beginning, America's oldest jazz fête strove for a breadth of style. George Wein, the festival's cofounder and patriarch, used to say he wanted to present the full sweep of the music, "from J to Z." That doesn't mean Jay-Z, though a tradition of crossover inclusion goes all the way back to Chuck Berry, 60 years ago.

"The Battle Hymn of the Republic," a quintessentially American invention, first appeared as a poem on the cover of The Atlantic Monthly, in February 1862.

Now, on a commission from the magazine, Jon Batiste — the effervescent pianist, vocalist and educator, as well as the bandleader on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert — has radically reimagined the song.