Jesse Arnaud Cook is a Canadian guitarist. He is a Juno Award winner, Acoustic Guitar Player's Choice Award silver winner in the Flamenco Category, and a three-time winner of the Canadian Smooth Jazz award for Guitarist of the Year. He has recorded on the EMI, E1 Music and Narada labels and has sold over 1.5 million records worldwide.
Life and career
Born to photographer and filmmaker John Cook and television director and producer Heather Cook, and nephew to artist Arnaud Maggs, Jesse Cook spent the first few years of his life moving between Paris, Southern France and Barcelona. After his parents separated, Cook and his sister accompanied his mother to her birth country, Canada, where he took lessons at Toronto's Eli Kassner Guitar Academy, and eventually studied under Kassner. While Cook was still a teenager, his father retired to the French city ofArles in the Camargue where his neighbor was Nicolas Reyes, lead singer of the flamenco group the Gipsy Kings. During frequent visits to Arles, Jesse Cook became increasingly fascinated by the "Camargue sound", the rhythmic, flamenco-rumba approach that could be heard on many corners and cafés in the "gipsy barrio". Back at home, he continued his studies in classical and jazz guitar at Canada's Royal Conservatory of Music, York University, and Berklee College of Music in the United States. He has often quipped that he later attempted to unlearn it all while immersing himself in the oral traditions of gypsy music. After the independent 1995 release in Canada of his debut album, Tempest, he played at the 1995 Catalina Jazz Festival; shortly afterwards, Tempest entered the American Billboard charts at No. 14. Cook has recorded ten studio albums, five live DVDs and has traveled the world exploring musical traditions that he has blended into his style of rumba flamenco. In 1998, Cook was nominated for a Juno Award as Instrumental Artist of the Year. In 2001, he received a Juno Nomination for Best Male Artist. In 2001, Cook won a Juno Award in the Best Instrumental Album category for Free Fall. In 2009, he was Acoustic Guitar's Player's Choice Award silver winner in the Flamenco category. He is a three-time winner of the Canadian Smooth Jazz award for Guitarist of the Year and numerous other awards. In 2011, Cook began filming, directing, and editing his own music videos with the release of Virtue. He has since directed, filmed, and edited eight music videos, 16 episodes of Friday Night Music, and produced, edited, and mixed the PBS Concert Special Jesse Cook, Beyond Borders. Cook has said of his music: "If you go to Spain and you play music, they’ll say, what is this? They don’t recognize it as Flamenco because it’s not, it’s a hybrid. I love Flamenco, but I also love world music, jazz, pop, Brazilian Samba, and Persian music."
