‘For 10 years straight, from 1999 to 2009, I lived with one suitcase, the largest Tumi bag they sold, a carry-on bag, and my one trumpet,’ said Botti, as he greeted his guest at the door. ‘It was awesome.’ It turns out that when Botti does decide to buy something he doesn’t mess around. It turns out the home is neither small, nor unassuming inside. A year and a half ago, he decided he needed to have roots somewhere, even if it was just going to be for a week a month; he stumbled upon the house and knew he was home: ‘I just walked in one afternoon and they were setting it up for a photo shoot.
I said, “I’ll take it. Everything as is.”’ The 4,500 sq ft home was designed and built by Jeff Vance of ID Group Independent Design in 2009; though Vance didn’t know it yet, the house was perfect for Botti. He’s added a few of his own personal touches: downstairs, a trumpet and a music stand rest in a corner room where he practises, a print of Miles Davis decorates the kitchen; and an Ellsworth Kelly piece hangs in the living area. But it is the main room, with its broad window, that is the pièce de résistance, a 26ft panoramic wall that sweeps from the Hollywood Hills to the downtown Los Angeles skyline. If you look carefully in the distance, you can see the ocean. ‘It’s like its own art,’ says Botti of the view.
This is the view we have when talking during a sunny and clear, but brisk and cold (for California) day. Botti is wearing a simple, classic outfit: black blazer, T-shirt, jeans and a pair of sneakers. Though he’s pushing 50, he looks preternaturally young, with pale skin and blonde hair, that offsets his light, hauntingly beautiful eyes. (We joke that his half-Italian blood is doing wonders for his youthful good looks.) You can see why in 2004 People magazine voted him as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People, at a time when his career was ascending.
In 2005, he released his then-biggest solo record, When I Fall In Love, and had already toured with Josh Groban when Oprah discovered him and booked him to perform at the Legends Ball.
For someone with worldwide fame, Botti is refreshingly down-to-earth. He is friendly, outgoing, and talkative and still has a childlike, contagious enthusiasm. Though he has been nominated for numerous Grammy awards, he talks about sharing the stage with his idols, people like Steven Tyler and Herbie Hancock, like that of a child who can’t believe his luck. Indeed, he recently got a chance to perform with Hancock at the White House’s State dinner for Chinese President Hu Jintao. ‘We played for four Presidents. Sitting right there,’ Botti says gesturing at the few feet between us. ‘It was both Clintons, the Carters, Vice President [Joe] Biden and his wife and Barack Obama and his wife Michelle, and the President of China,’. He laughs. ‘All anyone could talk about was the fact that Barbra Streisand was in the second row.’
‘Here’s the deal,’ he says, earnestly. ‘It was so thrilling to be able to play for the President, but it was more thrilling to be playing My Funny Valentine with Herbie Hancock.’ The song they played is one of the earliest and most powerful musical memories of Botti’s youth and compelled him as a budding 12-yearold trumpet player to make music his career. The son of a classical pianist (his mother), he grew up around music in his hometown of Corvallis, Oregon. Having realised he would never be a famous basketball or baseball player, he had a eureka moment when he saw Doc Severinsen on The Tonight Show. ‘I said, “Oh, it looks kind of cool to play the trumpet.”’ With a single-minded determination, he’d lock himself in his room and practise, four or five hours a day as a child (and later, in college, for eight or nine hours). His discipline paid off; one of his first gigs out of Indiana University’s prestigious music programme was playing with Frank Sinatra. ‘It’s very much like being a ballet dancer,’ say Botti. ‘A ballet dancer doesn’t spend most of their time in front of the Met.
They spend most of their time on the practise floor. It’s training. Watching the mechanics of the horn and making sure that you’re always on point. When you screw up in the trumpet, it’s not pretty. You want to avoid the clinkers at all cost.’ Soon, he landed gigs with Paul Simon and began releasing his own records in the ‘90s. But it was a meeting with Sting that changed his life. Sting’s assistant came to a show at the Knitting Factory in New York and told the rock star about the trumpet player in Bill Bruford’s current band. Botti was invited to play on a remake of the famous Police track, Roxanne, and the two musicians, who were both yoga aficionados, hit it off. In the next few years, Botti would become a featured player in Sting’s band, and went from struggling on the streets of New York to living the high life in a flash: ‘When he tours, it’s a private Learjet, the best hotels. It lands, there are five Mercedes. It’s insane, recalls Botti. Since then, Botti’s sound (a clear warm tone that’s never brassy) had led to him becoming a superstar in his own right. He moonlighted briefly on the soap The Young And The Restless, and led the house band on The Caroline Rhea Show. Swooning articles in The New York Times soon appeared.
But it’s during the live show that Botti and his band – currently comprised of pianist Billy Childs, guitarist Mark Whitfield, drummer Billy Kilson, bass player Tim Lefebvre, and guest artists Caroline Campbell on violin and vocalist Lisa Fischer – really shine. While snooty jazz critics might scoff at the softer edges of his recorded music on records like Italia and A Thousand Kisses Deep, in concert, he shocks the sceptics. ‘I have the biggest chip on my shoulder,’ he says of the lack of respect he gets from the hardcore jazz audiences. ‘With the trumpet, they don’t realise that we have this incredible band with an amazing singer and it goes from classical to jazz to R&B.
When we go into these places, it’s always kind of like, “Nah”. Then it builds and grows and you make people converts,’ he says. ‘That’s the greatest feeling. It’s the best.’ Unsurprisingly, his most successful record to date, 2009’s Chris Botti in Boston, is a live recording. Theshow, recorded at Boston Symphony Hall, featured an all-star cast, including Sting, John Mayer, Lucia Micarelli and Yo-Yo Ma, playing everything from standards (I’ve Got You Under My Skin) to modern pop classics (a rendition of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah). It’s Botti’s appreciation for the broader musical universe that sets him apart from his more purist peers: he even likes Lady Gaga. ‘It’s awesome theatre. It’s fantastic, like Madonna has done a Broadway show. It’s risqué,’ he says of Gaga’s live show, which he’s recently experienced. ‘She’s a relentless and tireless worker. I think she’s smart. I think she’ll be around for a long time.’ He could well be talking about himself.
Our interview is nearly over, and the car is sitting tantalisingly in the driveway. Botti has promised a quick drive around the neighbourhood before we part. Assistants buzz around the car in the garage and examine it from every angle. It has been spit-shined to within an inch of its life. It is ready. We get in and Botti explains how it was that he came to purchase a Ferrari. ‘Basically, I would have never considered myself a Ferrari person. I always thought the volume of the thing and the fact that they’re not considered everyday cars would keep me away.’
But he says, as we get into the gorgeous interior, a friend talked up the car as an “everyday” car. Once he saw it, he was sold: ‘The combination of the way it looks, the sleekness of it. When I’ve seen people drive down in a regular Ferrari, the GTB Fiorano or whatever, everyone looks at them,’ says Botti. But, he says of the California, ‘It’s a subtler car. When you want to open it up, it’s got all that stuff there.’ He demonstrates by accelerating up the hill. The car’s V8 roars, though he sheepishly admits: ‘I’ve never driven the car above 110km/h. I was supposed to go to Malibu tomorrow so I was looking forward to driving it fast.’ We take the curves of the hills at a dizzying pace.
The corners are blind and it’s unnerving, but there is no better place to be than in the seat of the California in the California hills. ‘The engine sound is like music,’ he says. ‘I don’t even listen to my stereo. I just listen to the engine. It’s disarming. It’s so pretty when you’re driving, floating along.’ We circle down to the Sunset Strip, before making our way back up to the house and Botti waxes rhapsodic about the car. It turns out that he’s living the life of one of his idols in another, unexpected, way: ‘Miles Davis only drove Ferraris his whole career. I thought to myself, “Man, not a lot of trumpet players can have a Ferrari.”’ He pulls into the driveway. ‘I’m enjoying it. It’s really, really fun.
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Source : ferrari.com
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