Probably everyone has trumpeter Chris Botti associated with Sting, with whom he worked both in concert and on recordings. But Botti’s career is influenced by a long line of other stars in various genres. Now, in his late sixties, he has returned to the beginning and released an eventful chamber album on the extremely prestigious jazz label Blue Note.
He started playing the trumpet at the age of nine, but fell completely in love with it three years later when he heard Miles Davis play. He devoted his entire life to the trumpet – his high school and college studies, and all his free time during them. During his final year at university he entered the jazz league, touring with Frank Sinatra and Buddy Rich. At the same time, he never wanted to be confined to a purely jazz box, playing standards in clubs, attracted by big stages and audiences of thousands of people. But he was never going to compromise on the quality of the music he would play. Throughout the 1990s, he collaborated with Paul Simon, and another important musicians like Aretha Franklin, Joni Mitchell or Roger Daltrey.
At the end of the decade, Botti was noticed by Sting, invited to appear on his later highly successful album Brand New Day, and for a few years he was also invited to join his touring band, where he became the lead soloist. Botti recorded many other albums with Sting and his parts always complemented the mood of the singer’s songs.
In the following years, Botti continued to collaborate with many stars of popular music, but he increasingly confirmed that he would make his career on his own, with his own name and his own skills not only as an instrumentalist but also as a composer. He had already recorded solo albums in the 1990s, but it was Night Sessions in 2001 that was the real breakthrough, on which Botti was able to combine jazz playing with a sound that appealed to a wide pop audience in an unprecedentedly tasteful way, creating a unique form of so-called smooth jazz. The definitive confirmation of the right path was the album Impressions, which not only reached number one on Billboard’s jazz chart, but more importantly brought its author his first Grammy Award, in the category of Best Pop Instrumental Album.
In the year of his sixtieth birthday, Chris Botti reached another imaginary peak: he was signed by the legendary Blue Note label. “Anyone lucky enough to say out loud that they record for Blue Note Records should pinch themselves,” he says. “It’s a fantastic honor.” He wanted to bring something really special to the environment of the label that made jazz history. So he decided to offer his music in the most concentrated form possible. “I wanted to get rid of all the orchestral arrangements and special guests and focus more on my playing, my band’s playing and the jazz classics we love to play on stage,” says Chris Botti about his current album, which has been given the brief but very promising title Vol. 1.
