Just announced: Jon Batiste with The Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom. View more details or donate now to get access to the pre-sale on Wednesday, April 8.
The Cleveland Orchestra, under the leadership of Franz Welser-Möst since 2002, is one of the most sought-after performing ensembles in the world. Year after year, the ensemble exemplifies extraordinary artistic excellence, creative programming, and community engagement. In recent years, The New York Times has called Cleveland “the best in America” for its virtuosity, elegance of sound, variety of color, and chamber-like musical cohesion.
Founded by Adella Prentiss Hughes, the Orchestra performed its inaugural concert in December 1918. By the middle of the century, decades of growth and sustained support had turned the ensemble into one of the most admired around the world.
The past decade has seen an increasing number of young people attending concerts, bringing fresh attention to The Cleveland Orchestra’s legendary sound and committed programming. More recently, the Orchestra launched several bold digital projects, including the streaming platform Adella.live and its own recording label. Together, they have captured the Orchestra’s unique artistry and the musical achievements of the Welser-Möst and Cleveland Orchestra partnership.
The 2025–26 season marks Franz Welser-Möst’s 24th year as Music Director, a period in which The Cleveland Orchestra has earned unprecedented acclaim around the world, including a series of residencies at the Musikverein in Vienna, the first of its kind by an American orchestra, and a number of celebrated opera presentations.
Since 1918, seven music directors — Nikolai Sokoloff, Artur Rodziński, Erich Leinsdorf, George Szell, Lorin Maazel, Christoph von Dohnányi, and Franz Welser-Möst — have guided and shaped the ensemble’s growth and sound. Through concerts at home and on tour, broadcasts, and a catalog of acclaimed recordings, The Cleveland Orchestra is heard today by a growing group of fans around the world.
vocals and piano
Jon Batiste is a eight-time Grammy, Academy, and Emmy Award–winning singer, songwriter, composer, and pianist, renowned for his genre-defying approach to music and his commitment to inclusivity and cultural exploration. Batiste’s latest studio album, BIG MONEY, is a project rooted in American traditions spanning gospel, soul, blues, folk, and rock & roll. Featuring collaborations with No I.D., Randy Newman, and Andra Day, the album earned three nominations at the 2026 Grammy Awards and won Best Americana Album. Batiste supported the project with a national headlining tour that visited over 30 venues across the country, consistently selling out. BIG MONEY followed 2024’s Beethoven Blues (Batiste Piano Series, Vol. 1). Marking the first installment in his new solo piano series, the project showcases his interpolations of some of Beethoven’s most iconic works, reimagined through an expansive lens. The album topped Billboard’s Classical Albums chart for nine weeks and delivered Batiste’s biggest sales week to date.
In 2023, he released World Music Radio, a globetrotting album of originals inspired by his mission to create community and expand culture through the power of music. Featuring collaborators including Jon Bellion, Lana Del Rey, and Lil Wayne, the project received five Grammy nominations, including Album of the Year. That same year, he was the subject of Matthew Heineman’s moving Netflix documentary American Symphony, released in partnership with Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground. The film chronicles Batiste’s professional triumphs in 2022 — marked by nine Grammy nominations and five wins for his 2021 album We Are — while he simultaneously confronts his wife’s cancer recurrence. He also co-wrote the film’s original song “It Never Went Away,” which earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song and a Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media.
In 2020, he received two Grammy nominations for the albums Chronology of a Dream: Live at the Village Vanguard and Meditations (with Cory Wong). Batiste’s work also extends to film composition, most recently contributing the score for Jason Reitman’s 2024 film Saturday Night, which depicts the chaotic 90 minutes leading up to the first broadcast of Saturday Night Live in 1975. He also composed and performed music for the Disney/Pixar film Soul, earning an Academy Award for Best Original Score alongside fellow composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Soul also earned Batiste a Golden Globe, a BAFTA, an NAACP Image Award, and a Critics’ Choice Award.
From 2015 to 2022, Batiste served as bandleader and musical director of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on CBS.
Part of the 2026 Blossom Music Festival
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