A passionate evening of instrumental storytelling

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.

Despite audio reverb that added utterly unnecessary enhancement to his gorgeous trumpet sound, Botti’s opening phrase on “Someone to Watch Over Me” was delivered with the deep, emotive intensity of that rare entity -- an instrumental storyteller.

Using every resource of his instrument, from the pure bel canto sound of the upper register to warm, open, lower tones, from slippery half-valve inflections to brassy flares, he found the lyrical intensity of songs such as “When I Fall in Love” and “One for My Baby.”

And when he ventured into the audience to play “My Funny Valentine” (for Sting’s wife, as it turned out), his passionate rendering even surpassed Sting’s subsequent reading of the tune.

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, who included Botti as a guest artist on his new CD.

Highlights included Sting’s intimate version of “Someone to Watch Over Me”; Olstead’s vivacious, hard-swinging “Pennies From Heaven”; Buchanan’s quirky “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”; and, especially, Knight’s gorgeous “Lover Man.”

However, 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 (energized by Billy Childs’ superb piano) that ruled the evening.

The performance was the second of two nights presented as a live video taping for a PBS special and a DVD.

To the producers’ credit, the mechanics of the taping -- which included a roving cameraman or two and the stealthy moves of a robotic boom camera -- rarely intruded on the pleasures of an evening of memorable music-making.