Canadian guitarist Jesse Cook brings his unique flamenco style to Savannah's District Live

Acclaimed guitar virtuoso Jesse Cook and his band are coming to District Live for a stop on their continuing global Libre Tour.

Since he was three years old, Cook wanted to learn how to play flamenco guitar. He’s not entirely sure what gave him the fever at such a young age. Perhaps he absorbed the sounds of the Spanish guitar when he was living in Barcelona for a few months (before he could even form memories) where, according to his mother, he would carry a toy guitar around the house, trying to belt out “Guantanamera.”

Finally, when Cook was 6 years old and living in Toronto, Canada, his mother met a student of the famed guitar master Andrés Segovia and convinced him to take her son on as a pupil.

“It was really lucky for me because in Canada, or even North America, there’s not really a real pedagogy for guitar,” said Cook. “Most people ‘pick up’ the guitar from their uncle or join a band, but there’s not that structure that you get if you play piano or violin. So, she happened to meet probably the only person in Canada who could give me structure.”

An education in flamenco and World music

Another milestone in Cook’s creative development came when he was visiting his father in the south of France as a teenager. While visiting one summer, Cook’s father introduced him to Gipsy Kings, a band that would soon become a global sensation.

“He played me this record, and it hadn’t broken internationally, yet,” recalled Cook. “They were just a local band. He knew I liked flamenco, and he asked what I thought of these guys. I thought they were amazing. When we finished the record, we thought we heard somebody else playing the record, but it was actually live and seemed to be coming from the roof.”

As it turned out, Gipsy Kings singer, Nicolas Reyes, lived next door to Cook’s father and was hosting a party on his rooftop patio.

“My dad told me to grab my guitar and when they finished, I strummed and next thing I knew I was asked to jam with the Gipsy Kings, which was fantastic, a teenage dream come true,” said Cook.

Later in his education, Cook studied at Berklee College of Music, where the staff insisted that he play on a steel string guitar and learn classical and jazz music, when all he wanted to do was play a nylon string guitar.

“I had to learn flamenco on my own, so I kept going back to Spain to pick up things,” said Cook. “Now I just play music and try not to worry about what influences are involved and what techniques I’m using.”

Cook’s focus on flamenco guitar paid off when he self-produced and released his debut album,Tempest, in 1995 to immediate success. Tempest reached number 14 on the American Billboard charts when World and New Age music was growing in popularity.

Since then, Cook has released 10 gold or platinum certified records, recorded five PBS television specials, won a Juno Award, was a three-time time winner of the Canadian Smooth Jazz Guitarist of the Year Award, toured extensively around the world, and built a reputation as an excellent filmmaker, on top of it.

During his career, Cook has displayed an adventurousness and hunger for new sounds that sets him apart from more traditional, pure flamenco players. Cook incorporates everything from jazz, pop, Brazilian Samba, and Persian music into his rumba rhythms, and has collaborated with musicians in Columbia, Cairo, Cuba, and other parts of the globe.

“I’m always looking for new sounds in music,” said Cook. “If you look at my discography it seems like every few records, I’m trying to find something different. I want to do something other people haven’t heard. I want to write stuff that represents me, and I live in Toronto which is this multi-cultural population from around the world.”

On his latest album, Libre, Cook found a new source of inspiration in the modern music his daughter listened to during the pandemic.

“We were on a summer road trip, and I said that if she was in the passenger seat, she had to play DJ,” said Cook. “She was playing stuff that she liked at the time, and she was into trap music. Certain trap songs she had were by Asian artists who were incorporating Asian scales and other exotic sounds and I thought that was interesting. That’s a little like where I live—a big world music mashup.”

Besides recording a new album during the pandemic, Cook also grew his YouTube channel by challenging himself to re-record 40 of his older songs at a rate of one song per week. Eventually, he was convinced to release the newly recorded material as a stand-alone album called, Love in the Time of Covid.

“I wasn’t thinking about making a record at the time,” said Cook. “I had to play all the instruments myself and do it pretty quickly because I had to put out a new video every Friday. Every week was like a doomsday clock. I did that for months and it was great.”

“I feel like I’ve become a better engineer. I’ve always recorded and mixed my own albums, and when I listen to the new versions of these songs compared to the early versions of those songs from the mid-nineties, the sound quality is much better. Having done 11 albums at this point, I guess my chops have improved.”

At the Upcoming District Live concert, Cook will play songs from his entire discography, backed by a talented band consisting of an Algerian violinist and multi-instrumentalist, a Portuguese Grammy Award-winning drummer, and “the funkiest ginger bass player in the world.”

“We have the daunting task of representing the songs with five people,” said Cook. “We’re all doing double duty. The rhythm guitar is playing a flamenco guitar, but it’s plugged into a computer so that he can use the guitar to play other instruments.”

“I would encourage people to bring their dancing shoes, not your opera glasses. Usually by the end of the night, it’s a big rumba party.”

If You Go >>

What: Jesse Cook

When: 8 p.m., Jan. 17

Where: District Live, 400 W. River St.

Cost: $40 Info: www.plantriverside.com/district-live Sent from my iPhone

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Flamenco guitar virtuoso Jesse Cook at Savannah GA District Live