Swanson was one of more than a hundred students who got to listen to Batiste, former director of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” band, perform unreleased music and talk to NPR journalist and UVA alumnus Bilal Qureshi about the pressures artists face.
Later, a showing of “American Symphony,” a documentary focusing on Batiste and his wife, the writer Suleika Jaouad, closed the Virginia Film Festival at the Paramount Theater that evening.
Festival officials are finalizing attendance numbers for the five-day film fest that began Wednesday, but they estimate that they sold more than 19,000 tickets.