We'll have to stitch up Bublé

The day before Valentine's Day, Chris Botti came to play with the Colorady Symphony Orchestra. As subscribers we had found out about the show months ago. This was fortunate for us, as the entire Boettcher Concert Hall was sold out. That's kind of a rarity, at least for the shows that we attend.

For the few who don't know who Chris Botti is, he is a jazz trumpeter. That's sort of like saying that Chet Baker or Maynard Ferguson were jazz trumpeters--there's sort of a lack of superlatives there. Anyway, Botti is stylistically very smooth and mellow. I discovered him in 1997 in a music shop in Boulder, the kind where they had CD players and headphones so you could listen to the entire CD, not just the pre-fab samples that someone else got to pick out. I listened to the whole Midnight Without You CD and bought it immediately. I have been a fan ever since.



In the picture above, he has migrated to behind the harp. During the program, we were treated to some of his tunes from his recent albums. He brought his band with him, which consisted of a guitarist, a bassist and a pianist. We also got to hear a tune from another jazz great, Miles Davis, as well as a Billie Holliday song.

One of the neat things about Botti's performance is that he migrated around the stage a lot. He didn't hog the spotlight when others were doing solos. Since Boettcher is in the round, there are a couple hundred people, at least, who are behind the stage. Botti turned around to face us quite a bit. This was a totally unexpected delight, since most performers do not do this.

Something funny: the woman in white on the balcony above Botti on the right was incredibly loud. At one point, the tune was really quiet and mellow, but you could her HER clapping throughout the entire theater. It was sort of amazing. Even Botti himself noticed, and commented on how... exuberant she was. Ha!

At the end, he said, "You know that song Fly Me To the Moon?" and everyone cheered. He said, "We aren't going to play it, because now that Michael Bublé has sung it, I can't play it anymore!" Most of you know that Fly Me To the Moon was Jeff's and my wedding song, so we were greatly disappointed, although Botti and his band did play another, less well-known Sinatra song, after he related his tale of playing with Sinatra's band in the early 1980's.



Jeff and I waited in a long line afterward for a chance to talk to Botti for a minute and maybe get some stuff signed. I ended up with a signed program and this picture. The poor guy was probably exhausted, since by that point it was nearly 10:30 pm, but he was gracious and very nice.

I told him how he had dashed our hopes of hearing Fly Me To the Moon, and he just smiled and said, "Yes, we'll have to stitch up Bublé!" It was the end of a perfect evening.