Back in 1981, Nick Webb and Simon James, two enterprising British music school students, decided to start an instrumental acoustic jazz band focused on dueling steel- and nylon-string guitars. Mind ...

CALL HIM POP. Call him jazz. Call him, if you must, a smooth operator. But whatever you do, don’t call the music that trumpeter Chris Botti makes smooth jazz. “We’re not smooth jazz,” Botti says, ...