Produced by Bobby Colomby, the yuletide 2006 edition of December premieres two new songs: a breathtaking interpretation of Franz Schubert's “Ave Maria," featuring the Choir of St. John's, Smith's Square, and “I Don't Really Want Much For Christmas" (featuring Eric Bent).
The newly expanded edition of December also debuts new versions of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" and “Silent Night."
A full concert version of the critically-acclaimed Chris Botti Live with Orchestra & Special Guests, a viewer-grabbing highlight of this year's PBS Pledge Week, is available now in a CD/DVD package or as a CD-only.
Chris Botti Live with Orchestra & Special Guests, shot December 1 and 2, 2005, over a Thursday-Friday run at LA's fabled Wilshire Theatre, inspired the Los Angeles Times music critic Don Heckman to write, “It was apparent, from the first notes Chris Botti played at the Wilshire Theatre on Friday, that the sold-out house was in for a special evening ... Botti's latest album, To Love Again--as well as the previously released When I Fall In Love--features extraordinary lineups of vocal guest artists. Six showed up for the concert--Sting, Jill Scott, Paula Cole, Renee Olstead, Paul Buchanan and Gladys Knight--along with Burt Bacharach ... despite the inevitable audience excitement generated by the appearance of such vocal headliners and despite the artists' diversity of interpretations, it was Botti's virtuosic trumpet work, his inventive melody-making, his engaging onstage presence and his powerful band ... that ruled the evening."
Chris Botti has been steadily developing a reputation as one of the nation's most compelling jazz artists. In a review of Botti's performance at the JVC Jazz Festival show at Carnegie Hall, The New York Times wrote, “the blond, dapper Mr. Botti, from Portland, Ore., belongs to a long line of trumpeters who are also popular entertainers ... Mr. Botti ... and his band, whose main man, the pianist Billy Childs, alternated between synthesizer and acoustic piano, performed sprawling, echo-heavy arrangements of songs ranging from Leonard Cohen's 'Thousand Kisses' to 'Flamenco Sketches' from (Miles) Davis's Kind of Blue the classic record that started it all."
For more information contact All About Jazz.
