Anatomy of Angels is one that strives to deconstruct the often spiritual process of improvisation—an attempt to capture and define “the intangible nature of playing and the communication of how we create these moments that give us a glimpse of another reality, or another world. It’s an unseen world that we don’t really tap into on a daily basis.” That reality is preserved here in startlingly intimate clarity, sans retakes, edits or overdubs.
Within Batiste’s ideas is a love for, and understanding of, jazz history in full, a result of the comprehensive education he received as a promising talent in his native New Orleans. “All jazz and all styles of music are important,” he says, thinking about what he wanted to offer his audience last fall. “I was really trying to present the spectrum of the music the way that I was taught when I was 11 or 12 and started playing jazz.”