INTO THE GROOVE

Nylon-string maestro Jesse Cook finds release in electronic beats on Libre, his latest fret-burning effort.

- JIMMY LESLIE

JESSE COOK CROSSES over to such a broad audience that he essentially flies over the radar as a guitar player. The French-born Canadian has dazzling chops and deep nylon-string guitar knowledge, yet he momentarily draws a blank when asked what pick he favors because he's more accustomed to being addressed like a singer by the straight press than as a guitar instrumentalist by a player's magazine.

Cook packs theaters with the general public and is more likely to be seen onscreen doing one of his popular PBS specials than on late-night talk show. His YouTube channel has nearly 100,000 subscribers and more than 25 million accumulated views, while his Spotify numbers surpass 55 million and his Pandora streams soar beyond 300 million. Cook's music is flamenco-inspired, but he's not a pure-breed flamenco cat. He's capable of playing classical, jazz and a variety of Latin styles, and his own music is a mixed bag full of all that. Consider his latest release, Libre (One World). Inspired by the music his teenage kids listen to — from trap to lo-fi — it finds him fretting over infectious beats created via '80s technology, namely the venerable Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer.

Libre is a total pandemic record, conjured in Cook's Toronto home studio with myriad overdubs and guests who bring a whole world of fretted instruments to the party. The primary collaborator is Algerian multitasker Fethi Nadjem, who cowrote the fabulously funky “Hey! the trippy dark “Onward til Dawn and the exotic Oran while contributing mandole, gumbri, and heavenly violin solos over the album's length.