Jon Batiste’s Live Performance is Intimate, Emotionally Charged, and Musically Vast
at the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater in Vail, Colorado.
Evan Dale // Sep 8, 2025
Jason Myers / Memorandum Media
There isn’t a venue that could hold the immensity of Jon Batistse’s musical catalogue, let alone he and his band’s explosive stage presence. He – they – are simply too grand, and their collective performance is so wide-ranging that it eclipses any guest’s expectations of what live music can embody. Even at the most dynamic of amphitheaters – Jon Batiste sold out Red Rocks just a few days ago – his voice fills the space, his soul bleeds into every row, and his band explores a boundless swath of music through the course of a few blissful hours. Just one night before Red Rocks – at the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater in Vail – the grandiose, daunting nature of the performance may have felt larger than life, but it was never out of place.
Expressly, the show doesn’t leave out anyone in the crowd, or dismiss the unique qualities of any concert at any venue. A Jon Batiste show is a communal experience, fluid and relational in relative accordance with the physical space, the attendees, and the energy triangulated between it all. ‘The more that I add to the catalog – the more that I add to the story – it really adds an interesting ability to make the shows very one-of-one,’ Batiste told us when we connected a few days before his trot through Colorado in the early stage of his ongoing Big Money Tour. ‘I can cultivate the show to the environment to the audience and really make it so that if you go to every show, you'll see a different expression of the same kind of journey through human emotion, and at the same time a journey through the history of music.’
If it all feels too daunting to imagine when reading even Batiste’s own poetic words on the concepts and constructs framing his performance, we felt the same way until we saw it all live on – and quite a bit off – stage.
Humble and quirky, established actor and model, Diana Silvers – who should be taken with equal seriousness as a musician – made her way to the stage first. Alongside her supporting strummer, as the low light of a late Summer evening began fading into cooler and darker tones beyond the roofline of the Amphitheater – and beyond the valley at large – understated stage presence quickly gave way to overpowering, immersive song. Her folksy offerings are made even more so by the nature of her performing the cuts she’s writing on the road along every stop on tour. It’s the juxtaposition between her unassuming approach to the front of the stage and her enthralling command over it once she begins playing that speaks so true to the genuineness that defines not only her set, not only good folk music, but also Jon Batiste through each indefinable corner of his own musical and performative path.
‘Being real. Being authentic,’ he mused when we asked about what drives his creative direction and defines his creative success at this point in such a storied career. ‘Just having a true relationship with the craft, and being able to serve people. Then really going out there and making people’s lives better with what I do. It’s so impactful for me….’
From the moment Batiste – along with the many members of his band that at many times throughout the set feels orchestral – takes the stage, drumming his way down a set of stairs from the front of house rather than from the back, that impact – not only for the audience, but for the artists, too – is obvious. There are few if any performers around today that can be more defined by their clear and present joy for performing music. There are even fewer artists – especially those that carry the kind of accolades that Batiste does – who so thoroughly envelope their experience performing with the guest’s experience consuming the show. ‘I really think about it like the circus of love,’ he said when explaining the communal nature of his tour. ‘It's like the circus is coming to town and it's a mix between a love circus and a creative church. It’s a revival. You leave and you feel it in your bones that there's something that you really received from us.’
Beyond the emotional depth of a performance that is designed to invite in everyone through the music and the energy created by Batiste and his band, the music itself is defined by a seemingly impossible range. The procession that guided Batiste to the stage, banging his drum all along the way, is reinforced by a continued experience rooted in the artist’s New Orleans upbringing. Sunny Side of the Street and Oh When The Saints immerse a listener in some regionally specific sounds, done up with the instrumental genius of everyone on stage.
Equally tied to his roots – both in New Orleans, but also as a compositionally trained classical pianist – a barrage of improvisational piano performance pulls the energy and the focus to the captivating movements of Batiste’s fingers across the keys. Through the jazzy, hypnotizing section of the show and into more piano-led and emotionally vulnerable works, Batiste brings a sense of presence and quiet to the crowd.
Then, a quick turn back to Southern roots, albeit in a guitar-driven direction celebrated particularly through the lens of his recently released album for which the tour is also named, Big Money. An explosion of song steeped in emotion that never ceases to get the crowd out of their seats and moving to the timeless aesthetic of the blues. ‘It’s exciting to go back to the essence of recorded music,’ Batiste excitedly told us about the sonic texture of his new work, ‘where people were in the same room, breathing the same air, playing it all on a couple microphones – singing together, creating a moment, capturing that moment like lightning in a bottle.’ And capture it, bottle it, they did, before marching back into the crowd – Batiste with his Melodica triumphantly in hand, ringleading the love circus – for a few more immersive covers that he calls a Love Riot.
The Big Money Tour is still very much on its way, so check dates for your city.
