The Player: Chris Botti

Chris Botti’s haunting, lyrical lines are delivered in a rich, deep, velvety tone that at times is interspersed with a clear and powerful foray into the far reaches of the upper register. His tone and control, together with his ability to pull at the listener’s heart strings remind this reviewer of early Chet Baker recordings.

Effortlessly straddling the worlds of jazz (four of his albums have reached No1 on the Billboard Jazz Album Chart) and popular music (in 2013 he won the Grammy Award for the ‘Best Pop Instrumental Album’), he is clearly happy in both camps. He has played alongside numerous names including Paul Simon, Aretha Franklin, Buddy Rich and Frank Sinatra; and listening to Botti’s trumpet style, you get the impression Sinatra would have appreciated his musical sensibility and innate sense of phrasing.

He has also recorded and performed with bassist/composer Sting, and the two have since become firm friends. As Botti says, “We’ve done so many great things in my life musically, but then he became my family in so many ways and so responsible not only for my success, but how to guide me through a lot of different stuff, being a bandleader and being a friend and all of that.”

Music has always been at the heart of the Botti household: “My mother was a classical pianist and my grandma was a professional organ player.”

Needless to say, Botti started his musical journey on the piano aged five, but by the time he reached the Third Grade, “I rebelled and wanted to play the trumpet. We had a great band director at school named Bob Ernst, and I also studied a lot with Fred Sautter from the Oregon Symphony. I was practicing for 10 hours every day.”    

Botti offers an insight into those early years: "My friend Ron Steen, who was the greatest jazz band leader I’ve ever probably worked for, hired me when I was 14, so I would play in the jazz clubs every night before going to bed back in my house. Every single night I was obviously the youngest person in the club, and I learned so much from all these heavy, great jazz musicians. I also learned how to hang out with other musicians, and how to play really sophisticated music.    

"Being in his band from the time I was 14 to 19 was like one of the most important things I’ve ever done. We opened the Mt Hood Jazz Festival in front of 10,000 people, and I must have been 17 at the time. What a thrill that was!”   

Botti went on to study for three and a half years with Bill Adam at the Indiana University in Bloomington. I ask about his influences: “I just went bananas on all the great classic jazz trumpet players like Miles Davis, Clifford Brown, Freddie Hubbard, Chet Baker, Doc Severinsen, Lee Morgan and Woody Shaw, whom I had the great pleasure of studying with for a summer.”

I was keen to know which horns Botti had played over the years.

“I played a Bundy cornet originally, and then when I got to be a better player I played a Getzen trumpet, because I was a big fan of Doc Severinsen. Then when I got to college or a little bit before, I switched to basically Bach trumpets and played my Bach on my first gig with Sinatra. That trumpet’s now with Sting, as he always liked to pick up my trumpet and play it before we went on stage. So I gave him my Bach trumpet that I played with Frank when he did the ‘In The Wee Small Hours of The Morning’ duet with me.”

So what replaced the Bach? “A friend of mine, Jim Hale, who was a great trumpet player and someone who I went to school with thought I would like this trumpet and brought it to me in an autograph queue I was signing. I said, ‘hey Jim, how are you?’ and he goes ‘Chris, I thought you’d like this trumpet’. I played one middle G on it, and I knew that was my trumpet for life. I said ‘call me tomorrow and we’ll work out the details, but I’m never bringing this horn back. And he laughed and said, ‘no problem’."     

So what is this beauty?     

“It’s a large bore 1939 Martin Committee Handcraft.”    

And the mouthpiece?    

“The mouthpiece was in the horn when Jim brought it. It’s an old 1926 Bach 3 (Not 3C). It has a huge throat, drilled out to a 13. I’ve tried so many others, but I keep coming back to this piece.”

Of course Miles famously played a Martin horn, and as Botti says: “If it was good enough for Miles, it is good enough for me. If I am playing badly, then I know it is me that is the problem!” 

Chris Botti headlines the Barican, London on 23 May - for more info visit www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2024/event/chris-botti

This interview originally appeared in the December 2023 issue of Jazzwise. Never miss an issue – subscribe today