Each week, TSJR will feature an artist (or group), either new or well-established, who has
impressed our staff recently or over the years. This week, we look at...

Jesse Cook – Flamenco Rico

As evidenced in many of the interviews we’ve conducted, musicians often speak of influences. For Juno award-winning guitarist Jesse Cook, it’s not so much an individual who comes to mind but a region in southern France known as the Camargue.  It's where Cook spent many summers, wandering the streets among the Gypsies who inhabit the area, soaking up the atmosphere and listening to the likes of Nicolas Reyes, lead singer of the flamenco group Gipsy Kings, who actually  lived next door.
 
Born in Paris in 1964, Cook first picked up a toy guitar at the age of three desperately trying to mimic the sounds of guitarist Manitas de Plata who lived in the Camargue. This Gypsy guitar legend, made famous by his friendship with Picasso, would have an enormous impact on Cook from a very young age.
 
After his parents separated, Cook accompanied his mother and sister to Canada, his mother's birthplace.  Recognizing a precocious musical aptitude in her son, music lessons followed at Toronto's esteemed Eli Kassner Guitar Academy. Kassner's other famous pupil was classical guitarist Liona Boyd.
 
"People were kind of tossing around this term 'virtuoso' when I was a kid," Cook recalls almost embarrassedly, "I am not sure. I certainly wasn't one of those kids you could stick on stage at the O'Keefe Centre and wow the crowds. I was too undisciplined; I never practiced my scales and arpeggios. I played what I wanted to play. I would learn quickly and then have fun with it."
 
Informal jam sessions at his father's house and at the annual Gypsy festival in nearby Saintes Maries de la Mer helped hone his skills. Between Arles, France and his mother's French farmhouse, Toronto seemed a world away. There he continued his studies in classical and jazz guitar at some of North America's most prestigious music schools, then attempted to unlearn it all while immersing himself in the oral traditions of Gypsy music. This unusual dichotomy paid dividends in his wide range of musical tastes. It is clearly and continually reflected in his passion for exploration and fusion, which has helped develop the sound and confidence he exudes on stage and in the studio today.
 
Since then, Cook has recorded seven critically acclaimed studio albums and a live album and has traveled the world exploring musical traditions that he has blended into his style of rumba flamenco.
 
"The 1995 Catalina Jazz Festival was a turning point. I had just made Tempest, independently, and released it in Canada," he remembers of his debut album. "Within a month we signed a deal with the American company Narada and then they booked us into the Catalina Jazz festival."
 
Originally the band was to perform during the twenty-minute intermissions in a little bar downstairs from the main stage. But the room quickly filled, and the crowd wouldn't let Cook leave. They coerced him into extending his set well past an hour. Inevitably, Cook was invited on to the main stage. Shortly afterwards, Tempest entered the Billboard charts at #14, certainly an impressive showing for a debut.
 
In 2001, Cook won his first Juno Award in the Best Instrumental Album category for Free Fall. Again, he was nominated in 2008 for two Juno Awards, for his 2007 release Frontiers (World Music Album of the Year) and for the DVD One Night at the Metropolis (Music DVD of the Year), which captures a spectacular concert during the 2006 Montreal Jazz Festival.
 
In the US, the single “Café Mocha,” from the Frontiers album, rose to #5 on the R&R Smooth Jazz Chart, and it reached #2 on the Top Ten Jazz singles downloaded on iTunes in May 2009 as well as #3 on Walmart's Top 100 Jazz downloads. Cook also won silver as Best Flamenco Guitarist by Acoustic Guitar magazine Player's Choice Awards in February 2009, second only to Paco de Lucia.
 
For Jesse Cook, it's not awards that drive him. Live concerts remain his lifeblood and with an already impressive career, he is really only just getting started.
 
International demand for Jesse has risen dramatically in recent years. In 2008, Cook travelled extensively performing at the Singapore Sun Festival, headlining the Dubai Jazz Festival, selling out a performance in Kuala Lumpur and performing in London and Dublin. Also, 2009 saw him play in Poland, Italy, Malta and Turkey, and Colombia, the latter being the birthplace of for his latest release, The Rumba Foundation.  As Cook states, “Colombia just took over this project,” the award-winning guitarist admits with a laugh. “So now I describe it as ‘returning to the Americas.’  I flew down to Colombia and worked with a group called Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto. They won a Latin Grammy back in 2007. They play traditional music known as Vallenato, and they make all their own instruments by hand, including gaitos flutes. I learned these flutes are always played in pairs and in only one key. They are doing it ‘old school.’”

As I stated in my introductory paragraph in my review of The Rumba Foundation, “Always intriguing, always with the exotic, tender stroke of the string, the music of World/Flamenco guitarist Jesse Cook is as intoxicating as the aromas and zest of the lands he presents in song.  His ability to intertwine jazz and flamenco influences is as alluring as his imagination.”