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Jesse Cook never planned to become a musician. “If you had asked me at age 22, I would have said that I would never, never make music for the public,” he said. “I would have told you that the public is much too fickle; they may love you one minute and forget you the next. Well, it turns out I did the thing I said I’d never do, and somehow, it’s worked out.”Indeed, it has. The Canadian guitarist has received Acoustic Guitar magazine’s coveted Player’s Choice Silver Award, 11 Juno Award nominations and one win, a Gemini Award and, most impressively, 10 platinum and gold studio albums. Since launching his career with 1995’s Tempest, he has blazed an incredible trail as a guitar virtuoso, composer, producer, arranger, and, more recently, filmmaker and cultural ambassador. The seeds of the career, he never was going to have, were planted while he was still in school. As a child, he was introduced to flamenco while spending summers at his father’s home in the south of France. A neighbor was Nico Reyes, guitarist for The Gypsy Kings. At home in Toronto, his mother enrolled him in Toronto’s prestigious Eli Kassner Academy. From there, he attended the Royal Conservatory, Toronto’s York University, and Berklee College. He was determined to become a composer until his music was aired on an Ontario cable television network. “Their switchboard got flooded with calls,” he said. “People even got my number and started phoning me at home and asking for a CD. I was saying, ‘I don’t have a CD, I’m a background composer guy. I don’t make records.’”
Cook quickly shifted gears. He self-produced Tempest at home, using an eight-track recorder and one microphone. Then he delivered the initial run of 1000 CDs from the plant to the distributor in his own car. Canadian television appearances followed and so did gigs in the United States. The 1995 Catalina Jazz Festival was a turning point. His playing earned a 10-minute standing ovation and sparked a mob scene. One store alone ordered enough copies of Tempest to land it at 14 on Billboard.
Cook’s fame spread across the globe. In Iraq, his instruments accompany the nightly news, and they’ve accompanied skating and gymnastics routines at the Olympics. “In Torino, the Japanese and the Russian skaters both competed to the same song,” he said. “One of them won. I think I should have got bronze.”
Cook likes to joke that his music “has had a more interesting life than he has,” but lately his international appeal, reflected in a style that mixes flamenco with everything from classical and jazz to Zydeco, blues and Brazilian samba, has become something he takes more seriously. “If music can come from around the world and interconnect so beautifully to create this beautiful tapestry, maybe there’s something music can teach us,” he said.
Occasionally, after 25 years of touring, Cook thinks about retiring, or as he puts it, “hanging out at my cottage, dipping my toes in the water.” The only problem is that he loves creating music. He also has some unfinished business from the pandemic. Tempest 25, the reissue of his debut album, was among those plans. So, too, was another world tour. It was a very difficult time. “The first year with no touring since my career began, I needed a mountain to climb.”
Cook got to work producing 23 (and counting) solo YouTube videos of his favorite songs. He plays all the instruments and records and films them himself. The collection is called Love in the Time of COVID. They are hits with his fan base and have introduced him to a worldwide audience waiting for that world tour.
The boy who wasn’t going to make music has made lots of it. Let’s hope he doesn’t stop anytime soon.
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