Photo Credit: Jennifer Rosenstein

Last night, the 96th annual Academy Awards took place at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. During the broadcast, highlighting this year’s best technical and artistic abilities in the film industry, Jon Batiste appeared, delivering his Oscar-nominated song “It Never Went Away” from the Netflix documentary American Symphony. 

Batiste sat at the grand piano for the musical moment, gliding his fingers over the black and white keys and crooning the sentimental lyrics. Notably, the American Symphony documentary captures the relationship between the aforementioned artist and his wife, Suleika Jaouad, and their journey as a couple. The year-long documentation deals with the convergence of time, which overlaps her fight against leukemia and his music career.

During Sunday’s award show, Batiste did not take home top honors for Best Song. Instead, Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas received the honor for their contributions to the Barbie movie via the cut “What Was I Made For?” Previously, in 2021, Batiste received an Oscar for Best Original Film Score for his work contributions to the Pixar movie Soul, along with Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor. 

Scroll down to watch Batiste’s Academy Awards performance of “It Never Went Away.”