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Botti Beautiful
 How does it feel to have your recording edge Diana Krall out of the No. 1 slot on the jazz charts and stay there for over 10 weeks? Or to appear on the Oprah Winfrey Show and then outsell every other album an Amazon.com for six days? What’s it like to share a Nobel Prize ceremony press conference with Tony Bennett, Patti Labelle, Diana Krall, Andrea Bocelli, Tom Cruise, and Oprah Winfrey? Trumpeter and IU School of Music alumnus Chris Botti knows. “What did I do to deserve this?” he muses.
This modest Oregon native’s first musical influence was his mother, a classically trained pianist and part-time piano teacher. As his talent and interest grew, he headed to the Indiana University School of Music in 1981 where his teachers included William Adam and David Baker, and he roomed with bassist Bob Hurst, later hired by Wynton Marsalis.
An offer to tour with Frank Sinatra came next. Then invitations from Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, and Sting, whom Botti credits with being most responsible for introducing the sound of his trumpet to the world. “He came to me and said ‘I want you on board with me for two years. I’ll make a difference in your career.’ That was 1999.”
He has released several best-selling collections of smooth-jazz, including his latest “When I Fall in Love,” which offers fresh interpretations of some of the world’s greatest love songs as well as some originals, with guest vocals by Sting and Paula Cole. Calling himself “a pop musician who plays jazz,” he just completed a European tour opening for Sting and is back on the road again sharing the bill with Josh Groben.
Botti and his band will perform on CBS’s The Saturday Early Show January 29 and he will perform with Paula Cole on ABC's The View January 31.
Adding the icing to the cake, he was recently chosen as one of People magazine’s “2004’s 50 Most Beautiful People.”
Visit Chris Botti at: http://chrisbotti.com
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