Frontiers

Jesse Cook knows a thing or two about frontiers. Over the course of a dozen years and numerous best-selling albums, the virtuoso flamenco guitarist has explored the outer limits of popular music, breaking new ground with each successive recording. In the past, Cook has blended African percussion, Cajun accordion, classical cello and pop vocals with his own rumba flamenco style to create a thrilling, multi-textured global hybrid. And he’s traveled far afield—from London to Cairo—to collaborate with some of the world’s best musicians.

For Frontiers, his seventh studio album, Cook pushed himself in entirely new ways. In search of inspiration, the Paris-born, Toronto-based musician and his wife moved to Seville, Spain—“the source, the Mecca of flamenco music,” he calls it—to absorb the influences. “I’d been to Spain and Seville before, but never to live” explains Cook. “Waking up there each day, with all the music in the air, and meeting incredible musicians day and night, was very exciting. I felt like a student again, picking up all these new techniques.”

With their creative batteries recharged, Cook and his wife flew back to Toronto to resume work—she to her flamenco dancing and teaching, he to begin writing his next album. It was then that they discovered that another frontier loomed ahead: parenthood. “I’d never been a parent before and had no idea what I was getting into,” recalls Cook. Suddenly, the focus of Cook’s writing shifted to thoughts of a new family life that lay in store. “We cocooned at home through the winter, with me just writing and waiting for Luc to be born,” he says (Lucas arrived on March 14, 2005). “It was a really happy time.”

That sense of anticipation helps to make Frontiers Cook’s most personal album to date. Instrumental tracks like the moody “Turning,” the thoughtful “Waiting” and the introspective “Come What May” conjure up visions of days spent reflecting on the past and contemplating the future. But the album also boasts some joyous night music, from the fiery opener “Matisse the Cat” and the propulsive “Vamos” to the sultry swing of “Café Mocha.” “Upbeat rumba flamenco is what I’m known for,” concedes Cook. “That’s what gets crowds on their feet. But I wanted to introduce people to another side of me, with quieter and slower numbers as well.”

Recorded at Cook’s home studio, Frontiers is also marked by some memorable vocal numbers. Egyptian-Canadian singer Maryem Tollar, who toured with Cook and sang on “Qadduka-l-Mayyas,” from Cook’s 2003 Nomad album, rejoins him on the dreamily hypnotic “Europa.” And Latin-Canadian vocalist Amanda Martinez contributes a haunting interpretation of the tragic Mexican folk song “La Llorona,” about a woman who murders her children after discovering her husband’s infidelity.

But the album’s most surprising track is Cook’s cover of Bob Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe.” Sung by rising Canadian songstress Melissa McClelland, it puts a refreshing Latin spin on a little-known classic that Cook stumbled on while listening to a Dylan compilation. “My first thought when I heard,” recalled Cook, “was ‘wow, what a beautiful song.’ Then I wondered if it would work as a rumba. So I got out my guitar and strummed along to Bob, and it sounded great.” Added Cook, who previously rumba-fied Crowded House’s “Fall on Your Feet” with The Rembrandts’ Danny Wilde: “I loved the idea of this Dylan song being sung with a female perspective, so I invited Melissa to sing it and she did an amazing job.”

Cook’s adventurous approach to music began at a young age, when trips to Europe to see his father exposed him to a variety of exotic sounds—including the music of the legendary Gipsy Kings, with whom he shared a now famous jam session on a rooftop in the French city of Arles. After releasing his independent debut Tempest in 1995, Cook was signed to Narada Records and has since sold more than one million albums worldwide and won a Juno Award for 2000’s Free Fall album. His tours, from concert halls to appearances at major events like the Montreal Jazz Festival, are typically sold-out affairs. And reviewers routinely praise what one critic called his “uncompromising musicality and ferocious guitar prowess.”