American Symphony: Jon Batiste and Wife Suleika Jaouad Face Music and Mortality Together
By Karen Gordon
Rating: A-minus
An air of uncertainty and a kind of hopeful melancholy hangs over Matthew Heineman’s intimate and touching documentary American Symphony.
The film, about the multi-talented musician and composer Jon Batiste and his wife, writer and speaker Suleika Jaouad, chronicles a complicated time for both artists.
Batiste is composing and preparing to conduct a new classical work, called American Symphony, that will debut at Carnegie Hall. His goal is to use the form of a symphony to represent the range and diversity of American music.
Jon Batiste in rehearsal for American Symphony
But as he begins to work on that project, Jaouad discovers that her cancer - a rare form of leukemia which had been in remission for a decade - has returned, and that she had to undergo a bone marrow transplant.
The documentary weaves the two stories together as they each deal with what’s in front of them. They support each other through the process as Batiste works on his vision for this major new symphony, and the uncertainty that comes with Jaoud’s cancer diagnosis, and a subsequent bone marrow transplant,
Batiste, a highly accomplished, Julliard-trained musician across a number of genres, is probably best known to many from his time as the band leader on the Stephen Colbert Show.
There, he was an effervescent presence. But the man we meet here is softer, quieter, deeper, more spiritual. He quietly worries, even as he prepares to pull together the elements for American Symphony, while doing what he can to support Jaouad as she prepares for surgery.
At the same time, life goes on: His star is rising. His accomplishments include winning the Oscar (along with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross) for Best Original Score for the animated movie Soul. He also put out a a solo album called We Are in 2021. The two albums earned him a combined 11 Grammy nominations. He won five, including Album of the Year for We Are..
Heineman treats his two subjects with respect and reserve. There are no false moments of drama to give the film a crescendo, no talking heads giving us context or an outside voice interpreting what we’re seeing.
He keeps us in the room at all times. The camera follows the two of them through to the end, Batiste’s performance, and Joauad’s post-op diagnosis.
It’s intimate, quiet, lovely, and in spite of the melancholy, there are moments of real connection and joy.
Early in the movie, at the first rehearsal for American Symphony, Batiste addresses the musicians for the first time, unintentionally saying something that could be a metaphor for the moment in time that this film covers, for music and for life.
He says, “This is going to be a work in progress. And it’s going to sound how it sounds until it sounds how it sounds. “
American Symphony, directed by Matthew Heineman, featuring Jon Batiste, Suleika Jaouad. Currently streaming on Netflix.