Chris Botti: Easy-on-the-eyes King of Smooth

"Just call me on my cell when you get back from New York," said the casual voice at the other end of the line.

Could this be a guy with a gold album, one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People"?

Doesn't sound like it.

But that's Chris Botti, folks — regular guy, and currently, the most popular jazz musician in the world, with the exception, perhaps, of Kenny G.

Originally from Corvallis, Ore., Botti has a heartbreakingly beautiful trumpet sound and golden-boy good looks. That's a winning formula.

His new album, "To Love Again: The Duets" (Columbia/Sony), is nudging the top of the jazz charts and debuted at No. 18 in pop. A warm, romantic outing, mostly ballads with lush string arrangements, it features a bevy of guest vocalists. That includes no less than Sting and Gladys Knight, as well as Paula Cole, Michael Bublé, Jill Scott, Blue Nile's Paul Buchanan, Aerosmith's Steve Tyler, Brazilian bossa nova master Rosa Passos and teen jazz tyro Renee Olstead.

Hovering over all this talent is Botti's trumpet — glowing like gold in the gloom, and bluesy, too — like the romantic Miles Davis records that inspired Botti as a kid.

Botti appears in Seattle Sunday with a jazz quintet (no strings) that includes Bellevue High School graduate Mark Whitfield on guitar and two great musicians named Billy — Kilson (of the Dave Holland band) on drums, and Childs on piano — plus vocalist Jeanne Jolly.

(Botti's Web site indicates he'll do a week in the spring at Jazz Alley, though the club is contractually embargoed from publicizing it until after the Moore show.)

Botti's career is in high gear.

In December, he taped a public-television special for a sold-out house at the Wilshire Theatre, in Los Angeles, with the singers on his album, plus Burt Bacharach. His first album, "When I Fall in Love," has been re-released in a CD-DVD package, and he's also part of a new jazz TV series for PBS, with Clark Terry and Roy Hargrove.

Success has not gone to Botti's head.

"I have to practice every day," he said, "The trumpet is the ultimate temperamental mistress."

Speaking of mistresses, the handsome trumpet player — whose curly blond hair and fine features recall Sting — says his love life, devoured by the tabs last year when he was dating Katie Couric, is definitely on hold.

"I have this window where I'm part of the pop-culture part of the industry," he said. "Before that window disappears, I'm going to give it every bit of attention I can."

Botti, 43, learned to play jazz trumpet on the Portland scene, with such luminaries as bassist David Friesen. He later studied at Indiana University. A gig with Frank Sinatra took him on the road, then, in 1986, to New York, where he scuffled before getting a call from Paul Simon. That was followed by stints with Joni Mitchell and Sting, whom Botti credits with "making" his career.

After several albums for Verve/Forecast, GRP and Sony, Botti hit pay dirt when Oprah Winfrey took a fancy to his 2004 album, "When I Fall in Love" (Sony) and invited him on her show. The album soared up the charts and made Botti a star.

There was every reason to believe the same thing would happen with 2005's "To Love Again." But an unforeseen bump in the road changed that.

Unbeknownst to Botti, his album (along with three others, by Ricky Martin, Bette Midler and Neil Diamond) was encrypted with anti-piracy spyware that wreaked havoc with fans' computers.

"They recalled all of our CDs," said Botti, becoming audibly upset as he recalled the fiasco. "The week of Thanksgiving, all through November and December, there was no product in the stores."

"To Love Again" plummeted — from No. 18 to No. 80 in one week. Though it's still No. 3 on the jazz charts, its pop position has never recovered.

"It's been a bitter pill to swallow," said Botti, who wrote a letter of apology on his Web site to his angry fans but says he holds no grudge against Sony.

Though he has a jazz background, Botti's heart is in the simple melodies and pretty pictures of smooth jazz. In concert, however, he says the band stretches out.

"It's 180 degrees from the record," he said. "I've had this hurdle to climb over, people dismissing me, 'Oh, yeah, Chris Botti, that's that soft stuff.' But when people come to the gig, they're like, 'Holy cow, we had no idea it was like that.' "

Anyone who listens carefully knows Botti can play. Check out, for example, his dramatic, three-octave ascent on "Embraceable You," tagged with a jazzy kiss, or his swinging, muted phrases behind Bublé's finger-popping delivery on "Let There Be Love."

Botti's on a whirlwind schedule. Before arriving in Seattle, he played the national anthem at the Broncos-Steelers football game, in Denver, flew to London for three days, then winged back to Phoenix. He's been literally living out of a suitcase, having given up his New York apartment.

"But you know what," he says with boyish enthusiasm, "it's great. It's what you dream of as a kid."

Paul de Barros: 206-464-3247 or pdebarros@seattletimes.com