Camuz.ca
September 18, 2012
C'est aujourd'hui que paraît le nouvel album du guitariste Jesse Cook. Un son flamenco plus nuancé que ces deux précédents opus, plus près de la sensibilité du musicien et riche en collaborations instrumentales.
Dès la première écoute, j'ai été éprise de grands frissons: ce gars-là parle mon langage, celui de la guitare classique émotive, solo, oui, mais aussi à l'écoute de son entourage métissé.
Des meilleurs titres, on retiendra Broken Moon, Ne me quitte pas (superbe complainte chantée par Emma-Lee) et Fields of Blue. Chacune d'entre elles possède leur propre caractère, mélancolique, lumineux ou empreint d'espoir.
C'est une guitare flam à son meilleur, moins «show-off» qu'avant, mais qui risque à mon avis de retenir l'attention d'un plus grand bassin d'auditeurs. À écouter enveloppé dans une couverture de laine, en ce bon début d'automne pluvieux. On a testé!
– Marie- Eve Boulanger
SHAREJESSE COOK – THE BLUE GUITAR SESSIONS
September 18, 2012
Jesse Cook’s ‘blue mood’ signals a new direction.
Like millions the world over Jesse Cook got his hands on a copy of Adele’s 21 and played it excessively. But the Juno Award-winning guitarist saw something that few of us did, something which emboldened him to tackle a long simmering personal objective and create a ‘blue mood’ record.
“It was the simplicity of it,” says Cook of Adele’s work. “For me it was amazing that an album, where many of the tracks were just voice and piano, was a pop record. I loved it. It creates a world where we get to really hear her voice and also the pianist can be more expressive. It just becomes a much more intimate album, a much more personal album and I thought I would love to do that.”
Spending the summer of 2011 cottage hopping with his family, Cook set about writing material for The Blue Guitar Sessions, his eighth studio album. It’s set for release on September 18 in Canada (September 25 in the U.S.).
“I was feeling kind of guilty about leaving work to go on vacation,” he recalls. “I thought ‘if I write a song every day I can do whatever I want.’ It became effortless. It was never a struggle probably because I wanted to do this record for so long. I finally uncorked the genie and, poof, out it came.”
For the 47-year-old Toronto resident, who was born in Paris to John Cook, a film director and his wife Heather, a former CBC television producer, this record is much different from the rumba flamenco for which he is best known. Indeed, he has been a leading proponent of the genre since bursting onto the world music scene with 1995’s Tempest. Among his many accolades, in 2008, he won the silver medal in Acoustic Guitar magazine’s prestigious Players’ Choice Awards behind the legendary Paco De Lucia.
Cook has steered clear of anything resembling flamenco on this record, producing a sound that allows listeners to appreciate each musician’s contribution. To do so he also battled his natural instinct to fill in space.
“It’s a big departure from the work I have done in the past,” he admits, “and there’s a fear that if you do something drastically different, will there still be someone there to listen to it if you change?”
“But I feel the role of an artist is to change, to constantly push forward and try and come up with something new. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life repeating my first few records so I decided I was going to do it.”
The result is a captivating 14-track album recorded on a pair of vintage microphones, which he had exhaustively searched for to replicate the mood of recordings from the Miles Davis era. Sound is of the utmost importance to him as a musician, producer and engineer.
The Blue Guitar Sessions is best enjoyed through a room-filling home stereo system – like the old days. A glass of shiraz next to the fireplace is optional.
“Broken Moon” features his extraordinary guitar accompanied by cellist Amy Laing while Tom Szczesniak adds accordion to “Witching Hour” a melodic composition hinting at Cook’s Parisian roots.
Toronto vocalist Emma-Lee makes an appearance on “I Put a Spell on You”, a cover of the song written by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and popularised by Nina Simone and Jeff Beck. Long time collaborator violinist Chris Church makes several appearances in just the right spots.
Audiences will soon discover how well The Blue Guitar Sessions translates to live performances. Cook is set to embark on a worldwide tour this September, beginning with European dates. A major Canadian tour will follow before he ventures south for a five-month U.S. tour, starting in January of 2013.
The live shows will include songs from more familiar work as well as material from the new album. Joining Cook on stage are the musicians that have become as familiar to fans as Cook himself: Chris Church, Rosendo “Chendy” Leon, Nicholas Hernandez and Dennis Mohammed.
“What I found is that the longer the five of us played together, we really gelled and had a sense of what our domains were. Each member grew within their domain to make it something really big. We all learned to fill our space.”
If Cook’s plate isn’t already full, August sees the airing of a new television special on select PBS stations in the U.S., a project which will surely expose his incredible musicality to a wider audience.
The sixty-minute concert footage was shot at the Rose Theatre in Brampton, Ontario in May, introduced at a PBS convention in Denver a few weeks later and rapidly gained momentum amongst programmers at the network stations. At present more than thirty stations – the number keeps growing – have signed on to air the production beginning in August 2012.
A new musical experimentation, a tour that will take him around the world, and now a television show are all indications that Jesse Cook’s career has reached a new artistic and globally-recognized level of success. One might say he has filled his space.
~Written by Paul Gains
Paul Gains is an international freelance journalist whose work has appeared in Time, The New York Times, GQ, NUVO, National Post and many other periodicals around the world.
CBCMusic.ca (Special feature)
September 17, 2012
Jesse Cook’s new album, The Blue Guitar Sessions, is out Sept. 18, and it’s already hit the sweet spot with many listeners, thanks in no small part to CBC Music's exclusive preview stream of the album. The stream is down now, but of course you can get the album yourself from iTunes.
Here are just a few things listeners to our exclusive stream had to say:
KayeIris: “You had me at the first 5 or 6 chords and I was in love by time the first track ended. Dinner waited downstairs so I could listen to all and then I hit replay. Oh my!”
ybg: “Continuing to grow is the mark of a musician who has a grasp of what he wants in his music. A hint of Wiel, a dash of Grappelli and Django, and a wisp of melodies not often heard. Good on ya Jesse.”
And good on ya Jesse Cook for sharing this shuffle playlist with us. He put his MP3 device on shuffle, and told us about the first five songs that popped up.
1. “People Like Me” http://static.music.cbc.ca/MISC/programuploads/itunes/iTunes_buyBtn.gif
K'naan
“It was the lyrics to this song/rap which made me re-evaluate K'naan, moving him from 'extremely talented' to 'brilliant.'”
2. “Ain't No Rest For the Wicked”
Cage the Elephant
“Love the way this song starts out small and groovy, but then gets bigger and bigger.”
3. “A Whiter Shade of Pale”
Procol Harum
“This song hooked me as a kid, I still love it, although I have no idea what he is singing about.”
4. “Taurina”
Duquende
“Just saw Duquende this spring at Koerner Hall. He had the great Jerez guitarist Diego de Morao with him.”
5. “Redemption Song”
Bob Marley
“Bob Marley is one of those artists. Every song he recorded was perfect. Nothing false, nothing extraneous. And his recordings still sound great, even by today's standards.”
– Li Robbins
SHAREThe Montreal Gazette
September 16, 2012
On his eighth studio album, guitarist Cook steps away from his flamenco default and offers 15 moody, easylistening pieces, supposedly inspired by what he considered the spareness of Adele’s smash, 21. On the surface, the disc has an elevator-music smoothness that sends it receding into the background, but Cook’s relentless precision and perfect tonality on the nylon strings will not be denied. There’s an airy beauty to soft, atmospheric tracks like Diminished and Fields of Blue, with quiet blues (I Put a Spell on You), jazz (Miles Shorter) and bossa nova (Child’s Play) broadening the palette. Add the stirring, delicate interplay between Cook’s instrument and Chris Church’s violin and this aural sketchbook becomes an excursion filled with modest pleasures.
Rating: ***
Podworthy: Midnight
– Bernard Perusse
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