Jon Batiste: Monk Movements - Batiste Piano Series, Vol. 4 [VERVE]

Why you'll love it

The fourth volume of Jon Batiste's Batiste Piano Series, eight takes on Thelonious Monk, from "In Walked Bud" and "Blue Monk" to "Brilliant Corners", closing with his own "Monk Movement".

This edition

• Volume 4 of the Batiste Piano Series
• Eight tracks across two sides, from "In Walked Bud" to "Monk Movement"

About the album

Jon Batiste has won an Album of the Year Grammy and an Oscar, led a late-night TV band and played stadiums, but he keeps coming back to the piano bench and the music he grew up on in Louisiana. His Batiste Piano Series is where he does it, and Volume 4 turns to Thelonious Monk, the most gloriously lopsided composer in jazz.

He plays "In Walked Bud", "Blue Monk", "Ugly Beauty", "Brilliant Corners" and the rarely heard "Light Green Reverie" with obvious delight, bending the tunes without breaking them, and finishes with "Monk Movement", a piece of his own. It's playful, generous and full of the little surprises Monk would have liked. Monk once said wrong notes don't exist; Batiste seems determined to prove it, one right one at a time.

Tracklist

Listen

Out August 14, 2026 on Verve.