"We play all kinds of music," says Jonathan Batiste, seated at the piano of Moldy Fig, a smartly renovated Lower East Side jazz club. The place is named for so-called jazz purists who decried the 1920s swing that supplanted traditional New Orleans jazz—and for those who defended swing against a nascent bebop movement. Batiste knows this history of squabbles over style, and he pokes fun at its contemporary variants. "We're gonna play jazz tunes in the jazz style," he says. "We're gonna play tunes that aren't jazz and jazz 'em up. We're gonna play tunes that are kind of jazz and make 'em... More >>>