Jon Batiste likes heat climate, so when the Oscar- and Grammy-awarded music artist obtained a name final spring about opening a jazz membership within the Bahamas, he hopped on the subsequent flight from Brooklyn.
He hadn’t spent a lot time within the Bahamas earlier than, and shortly discovered himself falling in love with extra than simply the subtropical local weather. The music of the Bahamas reminded him of the rhythms he heard rising up in New Orleans. “There’s such a kinship between each,” Batiste instructed Journey + Leisure. “The sound of what I hear after I go right here to a Junkanoo is identical feeling I get at Mardi Gras,” he added, referring to the Caribbean pageant held within the Bahamas.
Courtesy of Baha Mar
Since departing from The Late Present With Stephen Colbert in 2022, he was open to connecting creatively with the worldwide African group. “The African diaspora got here by means of the Bahamas, Jamaica, Bahia, and Cuba — and went as much as New Orleans,” he stated. “New Orleans is the northernmost tip of the Caribbean, in some ways.”
It didn’t take a lot convincing after that. In January 2025, he unveiled Jon Batiste’s Jazz Membership at Baha Mar to a crowd of 300 VIPs that included The Day by day Present host Jon Stewart, native musicians, former NFL gamers, and Bahamian dignitaries.
Courtesy of Baha Mar
The 12,900-square-foot membership is positioned on the on line casino flooring of Baha Mar, the mega-luxury resort in Nassau that additionally contains three resorts, a water park, a golf course, an aquarium, and extra eating places than many small cities. The membership’s 278-seat area is as glitzy and glossy as an awards-ceremony stage, and was designed with nods to Bahamas’ historic jazz golf equipment.
Throughout the Forties and 50s, golf equipment with names like The Cat and Fiddle, The Silver Slipper, The Banana Boat, and The Buena Vista fueled a homegrown jazz scene that attracted native artists and worldwide stars like Louis Armstrong, Harry Belafonte, and Nina Simone. These golf equipment are lengthy gone, Batiste stated, because the Bahamas grew to become higher recognized for its tourist-friendly seashores, relatively than its music. “We battle with an analogous factor in New Orleans, the place the trade of tourism conceals who we really are, relatively than revealing it,” he stated.
Courtesy of Baha Mar
He sees his smooth jazz membership as a method of introducing Bahamian music tradition to new audiences. In any case, he credit a lot of his personal musical journey to such golf equipment. “For greater than half of my life, I used to be all the time in jazz golf equipment,” he stated. “My first gig in New York was at one of many oldest jazz golf equipment within the nation. And that was after I was 17, and a scholar at Juilliard. The earliest experiences I had have been in venues like this.”
“Place is all the time tied to the music anyway,” he added. Certainly, Batiste approaches journey in an analogous method that he does music. He flies quite a bit for work, however at any time when he and his spouse — the best-selling creator Suleika Jaouad — plan a trip collectively, it’s extra about discovering a groove, relatively than dropping pins on a map or gathering experiences. “We don’t journey to examine one thing off an inventory,” he stated. “We attempt to catch a vibe.”
That was definitely true for 2 of his most up-to-date journeys: mountaineering to a mountaintop close to Lausanne, Switzerland, and driving in an RV from the desert village of Marfa, Texas, to the plush, arts-and-crafts city of Ojai, California. “I’m blissful to go wherever, so long as it’s with my spouse,” he added with a large smile.
One factor he by no means does, nevertheless, is examine a bag when flying. “It’s nice to have the ability to journey mild,” he stated. “And as Denzel Washington likes to say, ‘I’m leaving right here with one thing.’ In case you don’t know that meme, look it up.”
In preparation for the membership’s opening, Batiste spent a few month at Baha Mar, staying on the Grand Hyatt, and his ties to the native music and artwork group have deepened. Does he and his spouse need to spend extra time within the Bahamas? “My spouse needs to, and she or he’s the boss,” he stated. “She grew up not in a chilly local weather, and I grew up in New Orleans, so we actually do not just like the winter.”
“She paints as effectively, and we’ve gone to a number of galleries,” he added. ”We made a number of pals already.”