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It's hard to feel sorry for Chris Botti.
After all, the trumpet player has movie star-handsome looks, hangs out with cool people like Sting, Yo-Yo Ma and Andrea Bocelli (all of whom have played on his albums) and jets around the world, playing in front of adoring fans at clubs, theaters and halls.
Botti, who will perform with his band Saturday night at Hershey Theatre, understands his good fortune. He knows there are few instrumentalists, especially jazz players, who can claim the commercial success he's achieved.
But Botti would also like people to understand that his success is hard-won and did not come without a price. Botti — who has spent the last 10 years crisscrossing the globe, playing at just about any venue that would have him — said he sacrificed having a family, a home and, for a time, a steady paycheck.
"I just finally got a place to live four months ago," Botti says during a telephone interview, "but I spent eight of the last 10 years homeless. And this is from age 37 to 47 — 10 years without any possessions or residence or mailing address. Nothing. Now how many people do you know who would want to go through their life with nothing, literally one suitcase and a carry-on bag and my trumpet? That's the kind of insanity I've put myself through."
Botti also would like a little more respect from music critics, though complaints that's he's dumbing down the music tend to fade after they've heard Botti and his outstanding band (guitarist Mark Whitfield, pianist Billy Childs, drummer Billy Kilson and bassist Robert Hurst).
"In jazz, they want every single trumpet player to play straight-ahead and go record some classics," he says. "That's fine, but it's not going to get me a career. Wynton Marsalis and Roy Hargrove and Nicholas Payton and Terence Blanchard, that's their thing. That's what they do. My job, my life, what I want to do — I want to have an audience and I want to make the music that I love. Fortunately for me, I equally love the music of people like Sting and Peter Gabriel as I do a lot of the jazz stuff."
Botti, who grew up in Oregon and was educated at Indiana University, says he was first moved to pick up the trumpet after seeing Doc Severinson on late-night TV and learned to love it after hearing Miles Davis' "My Funny Valentine."
His career, which got its start on his strength as a session player in New York, got a huge boost in 2001 when he joined Sting's band for the "Brand New Day" world tour. Instead of sticking Botti behind a music stand, Sting allowed the trumpet player to roam the stage, popping up in unexpected places to blow a solo.
Botti took advantage of the opportunity Sting gave him and parlayed the attendant notoriety into furthering his solo career.
The trumpet player began touring relentlessly (he's on the road 325 days a year), often playing with orchestras and special guests from the pop, classical and jazz worlds. His albums, including best-sellers like "When I Fall in Love" (2004), "To Love Again: The Duets" (2005) and "Italia" (2007), employ the same strategy.
Though he and his band are fully capable of playing straight-ahead jazz at the highest level, Botti says he likes to mix it up, adding a pop singer or a classical violinist to expand the sound and, especially, to keep the audience interested.
"So much of jazz, the audience doesn't feel engaged," he says. "And I think that's why the world kind of turns away from jazz because it's just played at them, and that's it. The audience, how do they relate to that, especially the younger generation? I don't know; it's kind of tough. But we try to make it real fun for everyone but keep the music at a super-high level."
Chris Botti
Sat. 8 p.m. $51, $61
Hershey Theatre, 15 E. Caracas Ave.
Hershey, 534-3405
www.hersheytheatre.com.
(1040)
