Chris Botti

Chris: My music is more reined-in, because it's in a pop format. But this atmospheric quality is what I really loved about jazz, and I've tried to marry that feel to the textures and melodies you might hear on a record by Peter Gabriel or Bryan Ferry.

Chris: The music that really inspired me as a teenager was more like Miles Davis playing ballads with the second Quintet. You know that spacey thing, when they broke down all the chords in the song? That band playing 'Stella By Starlight' is something very different from, say, Bud Powell playing the same tune.