American Symphony
American Symphony
6.894%74%
In 2022, musician Jon Batiste finds himself the most celebrated artist of the year with eleven Grammy nominations including Album of the Year. In the midst of that triumph John embarks on his most ambitious challenge to date, composing an original symphony. This trajectory was upended when Batiste's life partner best-selling author Suleika Jaouad learns that her long-dormant cancer has returned.
Kevin Ward reviewedJuly 2, 2025
Didn’t love this as much as I thought I would. It didn’t have as much of a narrative through line as I thought it would. I know docs can veer off from what the filmmaker set out to capture. In fact, that’s one of the things I love about them. But this never really felt like it had a focus. We get Jon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad and their relationship, Batiste setting out to compose an American Symphony, Suleika’s battle with a recurrence of cancer, Batiste’s grammy wins and performance, and the performance of the symphony at Carnegie Hall. As presented, there never really feels like a connection between any of these segments. In some ways, it kind of just feels like any other celebrity reality show. Both Jon and Suleika seem like genuinely lovely human beings. The segments that depict the couple coping with Suleika’s cancer is the most emotionally moving, but on the whole I wasn’t all that engaged with the film.