By Robert Israel

Jon Batiste’s performance resonated with what musician Zachary Richard calls the “holy trinity” of Louisiana music: Cajun, zydeco, and “old-fashioned” rock and roll.

Jon Batiste at the piano at Tanglewood. Photo: Hilary Scott

Jon Batiste, in concert at Tanglewood’s Koussevitzky Music Shed, Lenox, MA, on June 28.

Lanky and ebullient, attired in a navy serge suit and shiny black shoes, Jon Batiste strode onto the stage at the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer concert series in Lenox last week, sporting a neon smile. And why not? Multitalented Batiste, who hails from Metairie, Louisiana, is at the top of his game. He has displayed his prowess as a songwriter, bandleader, and performer. He has toured nationally and internationally, and has appeared on both the small and large screens, sharing the story of his life as well as how he is supporting his wife in her battle with cancer. Batiste never shows a weary side, only his determination to triumph in the face of life’s adversities.

While his band — two drummers, a vocalist, a saxophonist, a guitarist, and a bassist — took their places, the 38-year-old Batiste acknowledged the applause with outstretched arms. The audience obliged. They anticipated him opening an oversized can of Southern gumbo and howled for him to saturate them with its aural pungencies. And his potent brand of jambalaya did not disappoint. The food invoked the heavenly glow of the pulpit, transforming Tanglewood’s Music Shed into a rollicking call-and-response religious service that included a laying on of hands (more about that in a moment).

Batiste, a Juilliard graduate, was trained in classical, jazz, and popular music. He paid homage to that training by including variations on works by Beethoven, Ray Charles, Leonard Cohen, and others, but never lost sight of the sounds of his native New Orleans. His music gives off the brassy shine of bands marching amidst the swirling raucousness of Mardi Gras as well as the funky blues of Professor Longhair’s piano strides. It resonates with what musician Zachary Richard calls the “holy trinity” of Louisiana music: Cajun, zydeco, and “old-fashioned” rock and roll.

The homage to Beethoven occurred in two pieces, “Für Elise” and “Fifth Symphony Congo Square,” taking listeners on a journey that went from the contemplative to the boisterous. He pulled them into the solemnity of the original compositions and finished with his own brand of controlled musical mayhem. I was reminded of a concert I attended by the Cuban-born saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera, who once told a Boston audience that he was about to play a snippet of a Mozart concerto he had been “tortured into learning as a youngster in Havana.” He eventually turned it into his own free-flowing Cuban-American-flavored variation. It was not only an act of celebration — it was payback. There is no doubt that Batiste appreciates the deeply sonorous power of Beethoven’s mastery. But he also knows how to riff on them, teasing the audience with the familiar, baiting them, and, like D’Rivera, venturing into his own variations on a theme.

Batiste also plays the melodica and, because he’s rigged the instrument with a microphone and transponder, he can move freely about the concert stage. Not content to stay in one place, at one point he snuck up behind one of his drummers, grabbed a pair of sticks, and began pounding on the bass drum, bending at the end of this impromptu moment to kiss the drummer’s bald noggin.

The New Orleans-inspired segment of his show included “Oh, When the Saints Go Marchin’ In” and a randy version of “Iko Iko,” a 1953 classic that is inspired by Indian chants. He exited the stage with several members of his band and wended his way through the venue’s front section, chanting “Tu way pocky a way,” another Mardi Gras staple. That’s when a laying on of hands took place — a ceremonial part of a religious service in which a blessing is shared through touch, hugs, and kisses. Batiste distributed — and generously received — all three. He approached me with a hug, and I returned his embrace, feeling his navy serge suit soaked to the skin.

In a sense, Jon Batiste is the modern-day John the Revelator, the man who is attributed with having written the final book of the New Testament, which conveys the prophecies and apocalyptic visions about the end of days. But Batiste admonished his audience not to surrender to that grim vision. He asked them to hold up their hand-held devices to shed light in the inky darkness. His concert ended, and the audience left the church, bathed in that heavenly light.

Robert Israel, an Arts Fuse contributor since 2013, can be reached at risrael_97@yahoo.com.