Jon Batiste Quotes

In a live environment, the more bodies you put in a room, the more energy there will be. That's a real big payoff. That's really important, the live show, it's a big cycle of energy. If the audience is boring, it's tough to get excited about it.

I feed off the audience a lot, their energy.

I like that raw energy that I get from an audience.

The crowd really controls how I am onstage. One show, it might be a lot of young people, super-high-energy dancing. I mirror that. Other shows, it's much more calm.

I just feed off the energy of the audience.

When I'm on stage, my interaction with the audience is something that really makes me come alive. It's a feeling like no other. The energy of the crowd fuels something new inside.

A live performance is the same no matter what genre it is. Wrestling, rock 'n roll, hosting, acting - it's the same thing.

A performance is only as good as the audience you are playing to. A lot of times you feed off of the audience, and we always try to give them all we've got and sometimes you don't get a lot back, but we've never been dead whenever we've performed.

When I play live, I feel how the audience is going and follow and lead at the same time.

When you're onstage, you're acutely aware of the reaction of a particular group of people, because it's like a wave.

The difference between a theatre with and without an audience is enormous. There is a palpable, critical energy created by the presence of the audience.

Once I'm on stage, the energy of the crowd wipes my nerves away.

My live performance, it just comes from feeling an energy and emotion from the crowd.

I love playing to people and seeing them react.

There is no buzz like performing for a live audience.

I definitely love performing live because there are moments of spontaneity. And as much as you're performing on stage, I feel like the audience is performing, too.

You're in there, you're having a match, and you're feeding off that crowd. That's the gasoline that fuels the match, and that's how you make your decisions. If you're not listening to that crowd when you're working, you're missing the biggest part of what working is all about.

There's nothing like performing in front of a live crowd and just having people literally react to whatever it is you do, and there's nothing better than when you get that connection with the audience.

I find that if I interact more, the crowd gets way more into the music. We also have a full live show happening, and I have lighting crew that travels around with me. We've got this Infinity Prism thing, which is lots of fun. It's an optical illusion device that we carry around.

The crowd is the crowd. You're gonna take them as an individual performer how you take them. The key is how do you learn from them. How do you use whatever is happening reaction-wise to get better.

When you talk about the exchange of energy between performer and audience and audience and performer, I hope that I'm one of the best.

With Dream Theater live, I may have been a bit of a focal point because I absolutely live for the energy on stage, and having interaction with the audience is absolutely crucial to me - regardless of how some others have described it!

I play some places where the people are right at my feet, and you can see their expressions. It's kind of more like playing in your living room. It's almost easier to play in front of thousands of people in an arena scene, in some ways, but you don't get the personal contact.

I'm always making micro-adjustments onstage, listening to the audience, and what a crowd is like can be infectious.

It's hard not to be affected by the live audience.