Virtuoso jazz trumpeter Chris Botti and his ensemble opened the La Jolla Music Society’s 2024-2025 Jazz Series with a return concert at downtown San Diego’s Balboa Theatre Sunday evening.
Botti opened with an unexpectedly understated “Danny Boy,” a trumpet and piano duet that gave the traditional Irish song a dreamy turn supported by Julian Pollack’s muted Impressionist keyboard harmonies.
After that prelude, the duo was joined on stage by bassist Daniel Chmielinski and drummer Lee Pearson for a driving, upbeat account of Frank Churchill’s “Someday My Prince Will Come” that set the pace for an evening of bravura jazz excursions that included interpretations from the Great American Songbook as well as compositions by Henri Mancini, Miles Davis and members of Botti’s own ensemble.
Botti’s stylistic range as a performer is his calling card, easily moving from creamy legato melodies to wildly bracing variations that include leaps into the trumpet’s piercing stratosphere. And sometimes these extremes propel a single song, as he and his exiberant drummer Pearson demonstrated in Victor Young’s nostalgic “When I Fall in Love.”
Breathless virtuoso variations were not limited to Botti or Pearson, as Chad Lefkowitz-Brown on alto saxophone amply displayed in his muscular, bravura account of Davis’s “Milestones” against Pearson’s explosive percussion forays.
Both violinist Anastasiia Mazurok and Botti came down from the Balboa stage and performed Rogers and Hart’s “My Funny Valentine” facing each other from aisles on opposite sides of the hall. Each soloist offered their own languid—almost mystical—extensions of the song’s wistful air, supported by deft harmonies from the onstage trio.
Vocalist Alicia Olatuja brought her big, gospel-inflected mezzo to two beloved standards: Cole Porter’s “Under My Skin” and David Mann and Bob Willard’s “In the Wee Small Hours.” Equalling the range of her instrumental colleagues, she could purr gentle lyrics one moment, then quickly launch into dramatic vocal variations with suave assurance and effortless delivery.
Vocalist John Splithoff offered his own moody ballad “Paris,” which he sang and provided guitar accompaniment.
Botti and ensemble chose an ebullient rendition of “Fix You” by Coldplay’s lead singer Chris Martin for the concert’s finale.
The ensemble’s encore was “What a Wonderful World.”