Jesse Cook

A world music master with his ensemble!

A virtuoso guitarist, Jesse Cook is renowned for his captivating fusion of world music, where contemporary melodies blend seamlessly with ancient tones. Cook’s musical journey began with his discovery of the album Friday Night in San Francisco by Paco de Lucía, Al Di Meola and John McLaughlin. Enthralled by the album’s virtuosity and artistic freedom, he found himself drawn to the fluid intersection of jazz and flamenco. Exploring the roots of flamenco and its diverse branches – spanning from India to Spain and on to Cuba and Latin America – Cook crafted his unique synthesis of world music. With 10 groundbreaking albums to his credit, including Libre, which was the 2021 Album of the Year by JazzTrax, A master of multiple genres he seamlessly blends flamenco, world and jazz creating a unique brand of rhythm and rumba.

He composed his first album, Tempest, over 25 years ago. Jesse could not imagine that such a humble recording, in which he played all of the instruments, would spark into such a musical legacy.  To date there have been thousands of concerts performed around the world, over 2 million albums sold, 5 PBS specials filmed, more than 25 million views on YouTube and over 400 million streams of his songs.

Jesse and his extraordinary band are looking forward to returning to the road and bringing their unique brand of rhythm and rhumba to audiences across North America and beyond.

“Jesse Cook’s sounds is exotic, exhilarating and impressively global, pulling aspects of Rumba, Flamenco, Brazilian samba, Persian music and jazz together, all written by the Canadian flamenco guitar wizard who was a childhood neighbor of Nicholas Reyes of The Gypsy Kings, for a time. His 1996 album Gravity is the album that you keep coming back to for dinner parties, a night on the deck with friends, and occasions when you want to let the good times roll, in a sophisticated way” – Owen Hutchinson, Vilar Artistic Director