Alvin Batiste News

Alvin Batiste - Marsalis Music Honors Series (2007)

Publication: All About Jazz
Author: Nick DeRiso
Date: February 13, 2011

People think of clarinets as this sound from a different era, and the guys who play them as having done so in black and white.

The late Alvin Batiste , who initially found his muse in Charlie Parker’s “Now’s the Time,” was never that way. His isn’t a same-ole, same-ole southland sound so much as a retro-fitted bebop update, with period instruments. Later, he dove into Sonny Stitt—and Batiste told me, a few years before his untimely passing, that he never emerged. Read more »

Branford's Tribute to Alvin Batiste

Date: 03.01.2008
Publication: Jazz Times
Author: Branford Marsalis

ALVIN BATISTE (1932-2007) Like many of the guys from his generation, Alvin played everything but was classically trained, so all of his music was informed by that classical training. When Larry Combs, the retiring principal clarinetist in the Chicago Symphony, was in New Orleans for a while, Alvin asked him for a lesson. Larry told Alvin to play something, and Alvin played a bit of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto. After listening, Larry said, “That’s great. Do you play jazz, too?” After he heard Bat play a few songs, he then said, “There’s nothing I can teach you, but thanks for stopping by.”
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ALVIN BATISTE: No one could have imagined that such a life-affirming disc…

Date: 12.27.2007
Publication: Hartford Courant
Author: Owen McNally

No one could have imagined that such a life-affirming disc as this would mark the final testament of the progressive New Orleans clarinetist Alvin Batiste, who died this year at 74.

Making a joyful noise unto the Lord, Batiste struts his genre-busting mastery of everything from high-flying modernism to the stompin’, Mardi Gras-like jubilance of the session’s grand finale.
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