Michelle Obama, known for her roles as an attorney, author, and former First Lady, shared a heartfelt musical session with singer-songwriter Jon Batiste at the piano.
They knew each other after Batiste’s Oscar-nominated documentary, American Symphony, was released. The film highlights his remarkable musical career and the difficult times he endured, including his wife’s battle with leukemia.
“Well, you know, life is everything all at once,” Batiste tells Obama. “We have to be thankful that we are still living life.”
As they sat at a grand piano, Batiste smoothly began improvising. That added soulful blues chords and lyrical riffs to their conversation, creating a harmonious blend of music and dialogue.
Obama also inquired about Batiste’s early days in music, “How did you become this musical genius?”
“I started learning just from my family and friends in the neighborhood,” Batiste replied. “I started learning just from my family and friends in the neighborhood.
“I didn’t think about music as a profession. It was just something that we did, as a way for us to gather. And then I started to learn all these sounds – classical music, you know…”
His piano improvisations smoothly transitioned into the first movement of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata, “It was one of those things that I could step into a world and I could escape.”
“And then I learned that you could take that world, and you could shape it in your own way.”
“There’s one song I sort of remember,” Michelle Obama said before starting to play the playful bass line of Vince Guaraldi’s ‘Linus and Lucy,’ a tune from the beloved Peanuts film series.
Batiste happily joined in with the melody, clearly impressed by Obama’s piano skills.
“I learned to play on a piano with broken keys,” Obama shared with her duet partner. “And the only way I knew ‘middle C’ was that it was chipped.”
Batiste responded, “I love that story so much. It’s such an allegory for the world. Things won’t be perfect but you know that chip, that crack, is where the light gets in.”
When Batiste asked Michelle Obama about her musical background, he challenged her to find middle C on the keyboard in front of them.
Obama accepted the challenge and, just before pressing the piano key, she hummed a barely audible note that perfectly matched the middle C she played seconds later.
It seems like Obama might have the rare ability known as perfect pitch, the skill to reproduce a musical note without any reference tone.
Perfect pitch is incredibly uncommon, with only about one in 10,000 people possessing it. Those who have this ability can exactly identify or recreate notes played on an instrument or sung by others. We’re not sure but suspect that Michelle Obama might be one of them.