Trinity Community Embraces CT Forum Message of ‘Living a Creative Life’

Trinity College students, staff, and faculty members heard internationally renowned artists Jon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad talk about the power and process of creativity at a recent Connecticut Forum event. Trinity is an education partner of the Forum, supporting its mission to encourage the free and active exchange of ideas.

“Pursuing your creative dreams is an athletic endeavor,” Batiste said at the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts on September 28. “The physical side is athletic; the conceptual is spiritual. It’s the transformation of something from one realm into the physical one.”

Batiste is a Grammy- and Oscar-winning musician who served as bandleader and musical director of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert from 2015 to 2022. His 2021 album, We Are, won the Grammy for Album of the Year.

Jaouad—who is married to Batiste—is an Emmy-winning journalist, author, artist, and advocate. She documented her leukemia diagnosis and her journey of healing and self-discovery in the New York Times bestselling memoir, Between Two Kingdoms. The couple is the subject of the 2023 Netflix documentary American Symphony, which chronicles a year in their lives when Batiste was writing his first symphony as Jaouad underwent cancer treatments.

Their live conversation, “On the Joy of Music, Resilience, and Living a Creative Life,” was moderated by Song Exploder podcast creator and host Hrishikesh Hirway.

While Jaouad was the child of immigrants from Tunisia and Switzerland and Batiste was born into a prominent musical family in New Orleans, the two always shared a love of music. They first met as high school students at band camp and reconnected at the Julliard School in New York City, where Batiste studied piano as an undergraduate and Jaouad played double bass in a pre-college program.

“What strikes me is how profoundly, universally accessible music is,” Jaouad said. “There’s something deeply magical about the way music brings us together.”

The couple spoke about how their home—featured in an Architectural Digest video tour—serves as a place for them both to create individually and to work together. “For us, we need some isolation, some creative solitude so you can hear your own intuition,” Jaouad said. “But there’s collaboration that has taken me by surprise.”

Batiste added, “It’s nice when you like collaborating with your spouse.” They have each developed rituals surrounding how they produce their art, learned that no creative work is ever wasted, and become more comfortable with the vulnerability of sharing early drafts with each other.

As the conversation concluded, Batiste sat at the piano to perform “Butterfly,” from his latest album, World Music Radio. The song is based on a lullaby that Batiste composed for Jaouad when she was in the hospital.

One of the Trinity students who attended the Forum was James Maciel ’25, a political science major and president of the Chapel Singers who pursues a passion for music by studying the organ at Trinity.

“I thought Batiste’s most poignant moment was when he said that creating your dreams is spiritual, but chasing them is athletic,” Maciel said. “This duality highlights the difficult, yet soul-satisfying process of believing in and achieving your most precious goals.”

Sharon Chen ’27, an art history major with an intended minor in studio arts, said that it was inspiring to hear how Batiste and Jaouad support each other’s creative ideas, even through difficult times. “The talk really puts into perspective how following your passions isn’t an easy task, but requires a lot of hard work and failures before you may be able to get to where you want in your career,” Chen said. “Having a community surrounding you and being a part of that journey makes everything that much more bearable and worth it in the end.”

Professor of Music Eric Galm said that Batiste articulated the struggle of transforming emotions and ideas into something accessible to listeners.

“I think this is exactly the right time for our students to hear that message, as they are growing and searching for their own artistic voice and identity,” Galm said. “This moment of inspiration—combined with the historical, theoretical, and philosophical aspects of a liberal arts education—helps to bring all of this together in a moment that they will carry with them throughout their lives. As an educational partner of the Connecticut Forum, Trinity is helping to make this possible beyond the classroom.”

The Connecticut Forum’s season continues on October 24, 2024, with “Reflections on a Complex America,” a conversation with journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones and historian Heather Cox Richardson, moderated by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jonathan Capehart.