In Concert: Chris Botti with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (Dallas Symphony Orchestra,PBS, 2021)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2023 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

After the Sister Boniface Mysteries episode, my husband Charles and I watched a show rather awkwardly called In Concert: Chris Botti with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, filmed in October 2021 and turned into a PBS pledge-break special now. Chris Botti is a pop-jazz trumpeter who’s basically yet another white kid who wants to be Miles Davis. The show featured 11 songs with a wide array of guest stars, ranging from a quite beautiful acoustic guitarist named Leo Amuedo to violinist Caroline Campbell and singer Veronica Swift. Dressed in a mini-skirt outfit and wearing a pair of huge disc earrings that looked like she was trying to receive radar signals, Swift was described by Botti as a singer in the tradition of Anita O’Day, “Diana” [sic] Washington and Billie Holiday. Actually she sounded like none of those people, except for some O’Day-ish scatting on a song or two. Instead the singers she reminded me of were Ella Fitzgerald, Betty Carter and Barbra Streisand – I got Streisand mainly on her chest-sung high notes, especially on her opening song, “There Will Never Be Another You.” Veronica Swift is certainly a major talent with a spectacular voice, but like Betty Carter she has a tendency to over-ornament a song. I remember one time when I heard versions of Cole Porter’s “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye” in quick succession by Ella Fitzgerald and Betty Carter. Both ornamented Porter’s melody, but the difference was that Ella had enough good taste to know when to stop, and Carter didn’t. When Swift sang “Embraceable You” on this show I was reminded of Betty Carter at her worst, turning in so overdone a performance it’s the kind of thing that makes people who hate jazz say, in disgust, “Where’s the melody?”

The program opened with a Chris Botti original (his only one in the concert) called “Sevdah,” which turns out to be the name of a Balkan folk dance, and it was strongly reminiscent of the orchestrations Gil Evans used to write for MIles Davis on albums like Sketches of Spain. Botti’s thin, rather pinched trumpet tone also evokes Miles, both when he played “open” and when he uses the Harmon mute – a piece of equipment that became so totally associated with Miles that when Clarence Shaw was playing with Charles Mingus in the 1950’s and Mingus asked him to use one, Shaw said, “But if I do that they’ll accuse me of copying Miles!” Botti’s second song was the standard “When I Fell in Love” by Victor Young and Edward Heyman, and he segued into “Seven Steps to Heaven” by the real Miles Davis. After that he brought on Veronica Swift (and in his introduction of her got Dinah Washington’s name wrong) for “There Will Never Be Another You” and Jon Hendricks’ vocal version of Bobby Timmons’ “Moanini’,” first recorded by Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers (with Timmons on piano, Blakey on drums, Lee Morgan on trumpet, Benny Golson on tenor sax and Jymie Merritt on bass, one of the great soul-jazz records). Swift sang the lyrics to “Moanin’” by Jon Hendricks and did quite well, her best singing of the night. After that Botti played a quite lovely ball.ad version of “Over the Rainbow,” Judy Garland’s signature song from The Wizard of Oz, with a beautiful introduction by acoustic guitarist Leo Amuedo. The tune featured some discreet string fill-ins by the Dallas Symphony, who otherwise were little in evidence after the opening “Sevdah.”

Then came Veronica Swift singing “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning,” written by David Mann and Bob Hilliard for Frank Sinatra’s pioneering 1955 concept album of the same title (his marriage to Ava Gardner had just broken up and he picked a set of songs that would express his heartbreak, much the way rock singer-songwriters would start doing about 15 years later), and Veronica Swift did O.K. with this lovely song even though much of it was taken too fast and some of the lyrics were rather awkwardly rewritten to suit a woman. (For some reason, it sounds O.K. for a man to sing, “You lie awake and think about the girl,” but just creepy for a woman to sing, “You lie awake and think about the boy.”) Then came “Embraceable You,” the wonderful ballad by George and Ira Gershwin that Swift just ruined with her over-ornamentation, and afterwards came another respite. The song was “Hallelujah,” and while one might have expected Vincent Youmans’ 1927 song of that title from the Navy-themed Broadway musical Hit the Deck, it was actually the 1980’s song by Leonard Cohen that is probably one of the most over-covered songs of all time. Foirtunately Botti did it beautifully as an instrumental with more excellent guitar playing by Leo Amuedo.

The next song was “You Don’t Know What Love Is” by Gene De Paul and Don Raye, which turned out to be a feature for Botti’s band – Chad Lefkowitz-Brown, tenor sax; Holger Marjarmaa, piano; Reggie Hamilton, bass; and Lee Pearson, drums – who were so good frankly Botti could have left the Dallas Symphony at home and just played the show with his jazz quintet and brought in the other guest stars as needed. For the big finale Botti did the Earth, Wind and Fire hit “Shining Star” from 1980, one of my all-time favorite songs of that era (indeed, this and “Serpentine Fire” are my all-time favorite Earth, Wind and Fire songs) with a quite strong and exciting vocal duet by Veronica Swift and Sy Smith – the latter an odd name indeed for someone who quite obviously presents as a woman. It was a nice close to a show that wasn’t nearly as eclectic as the PBS pledge-break announcers made it seem; despite the inclusion of “Hallelujah” and “Shining Star” on he program (neither of which are rock songs; “Hallelujah” is folk music and “Shining Star” is soul), Botti’s music remained jazz, albeit pop-jazz, and I for one would like to hear him do a straight-ahead jazz album with that great band of his and forgo the guest stars and those tepid dips with his toes into other musical genres.