Last updated on March 25, 2014
Chris Botti – Do you like jazz? You might enjoy this little musing. If not, then I suggest you 1. Go on Spotify to see if you’d enjoy this sort of music or 2. Go away and let me talk about my music in peace.
I imagine that my first experience with jazz actually came from video games. How many Nobuo Uematsu tracks experiment with this particular genre? Japan apparently loves jazz too; by population, they’ve got the greatest number of jazz fans per capita in any country in the world. From finding out that most video game composers love progressive rock (keyboards!), my progression to jazz music seems a natural progression in that regard. The noodling, the overly complex structures, the improvisation – all of it is awesome. That it often doubles as excellent instrumental background music means you can, theoretically, arrive to the genre as an intentional listener or a mere passerby and still enjoy.
A long way of saying I like jazz, but there you go.
One of those artists that really captured the pop cultural zeitgeist in this regards was Miles Davis. Nearly forgotten today, except for the seminal jazz record Kind of Blue (seriously, everyone should own it), he created several sub-genres from cool to jazz fusion. Fusion’s often gotten a bad rap, but it merely means the mixture of jazz components with rock sensibilities. For most, this means electric guitar; at worst, it devolves into elevator muzak that no one but Kenny G would enjoy (apologies to Kenny G fans!).
Davis crossed over from the bowels of jazz to the mainstream, though he’s quickly being forgotten. Leave it to a Davis-inspired musician to take up the torch in the form of Chris Botti. Former trumpet player to Sting (among other famous people, I’m sure), Botti set out to make the best “smooth jazz” possible in his early solo efforts. Smooth jazz intends to incorporate pop, R&B, and modern music elements into jazz music, whether that comes from a backbeat or a vocal line thrown in the middle.
While you could dismiss the music presented as “easy-listening”, that would be a mistake. The trumpet isn’t an easy instrument to play, by any means, especially when you wander around the melody like Botti often does. One small slip of the breath will mess up a take. Thirty years of practice probably helps, I’m sure, but there’s a layered complexity to the compositions that I enjoy.
Take “Indian Summer” from the album A Thousand Kisses Deep (ever the romantic with the early album titles). A Middle Eastern influence layers on top of trumpet playing layered on a electronic beat layered on a bass guitar layered on bells layered on whatever else you want to find. In other words, a whole lot of layers progressively enhanced by the presence of new layers. Obviously, not every song shows this particular facet; others just go straight instrumental with little accompaniment, and others with a full orchestra, but the variety helps out with album fatigue. It’s better to be interesting than boring!
More recently, the success of 2004’s When I Fall In Love showed Botti dropping many of the electronic elements of his sounds for pure organic instrumentation, leading to the support of Oprah. And heck, if Oprah approves of you, ride with the wind and make the money! Now, Botti plays with just about everyone, from Andrea Bocelli to Yo-You Ma to whatever other person pops up in his purview. I guess you could call him a “pop instrumentalist” at this point, what with the constant classical crossover albums (see: Italia) and other similar things. If pop takes its cues from the heart of jazz, then it’s not that much of a stretch. Also, if you get to play in Boston’s Symphony Hall with literally anyone you choose with any setlist, I’d call that a successful career.
And yet, I can imagine the more “hardcore” jazz fans not liking his stylings and crossover attempts. Frankly, the man does not fall into traditional jazz categories, and the later records do not contain, say, the instrumental magnificence of Davis, Coltrane, or Mingus’ complex compositions and improvisations. But, then again, when will another jazz band with the same loaded cast ever emerge again? Do you expect it? No. Much as I hate to admit it. jazz had its day in the popular culture, and I’m not sure when it will emerge again. Having Harry Connick Jr. on American Idol, likable as he is, does not bring it back (and even then, I could just call Connick a big band/swing experiment, not necessarily instrument-focused).
None of this makes Chris Botti a bad trumpet player; everyone loves his tone, and he makes smart career choices that add to his musical depth and longevity. He wants to play with new people to revitalize the music he enjoys, and that’s not a bad thing. For whatever reason, people think jazz needs to be staid and “the same” when it was never that way:
Ultimately, I think it’s a thing that hurts jazz in a way. When John Mayer releases a record right now, he’s not constantly fielding questions about how he’s never going to be as great as Bob Dylan. It’s like, “I’m John Mayer and I want to have an audience and a fan base and tour and make music and have people appreciate it.” He’s never going, “I’m never writing a generation-defining album like Bob Dylan did or Paul Simon did or The Beatles.”
But in jazz, if somebody releases a record, they’re saying, “You’re never going to sing as good as Billie Holiday” or “You’re never going to play the trumpet as good as Christopher Brown.” That’s an unfortunate part of being in the jazz genre because there’s always “it has to be all this or all that.”
Being around people like Sting, you realize it doesn’t have to be all this or all that. Sting had a rock band with four unbelievable jazz musicians, including Branford Marsalis and Kenny Kirkland. Now, how does that work? Were they all of a sudden not jazz musician because they’re playing stadiums with Sting? No. Were they all of a sudden not jazz musicians because they’re popular? No. Was Kenny Kirkland less of a great piano player when he was with Sting than when he was with Wynton Marsalis’ band? No.
I looked at that template and said there has to be a way to blur the lines — and not just me trying to come out and make records that would interfere with Wynton Marsalis’ career. When I came to New York [it] was when Wynton Marsalis was absolutely breaking onto the scene huge. The first thing I said to myself was, “I don’t want to go anywhere near doing a bebop record. As long as Wynton Marsalis is alive, he’s got it.”
I know what I do well. It’s the funniest thing about jazz musicians. They’re constantly trying to do the exact same thing. There are all these trumpet players and they all put out the exact same record and none of them are going to break through that ceiling that Wynton has. I say, don’t try to break through that ceiling. Move to another house.
Honestly, who cares what other people think about your music tastes, honestly? I like hybrid genre-mixing music; it keeps albums fresh, rather than containing the exact same highly-refined style throughout. Much as I enjoy rock music, one can only listen to classic or metal or prog before getting tired of their tropes, which tend to clatter around without any progress. You need the infusion of new ideas into old formats, or they will just die out in a generation.
So there’s my little endorsement of Chris Botti.
