Guitarist Jesse Cook is a Toronto-based artist who incorporates Latin and Spanish influences into his style of music. Though he is often categorized as a flamenco guitarist, Cook also uses elements of jazz, rumba and funk in his compositions. Only a month after he released his debut album Tempest, independently in Canada, he landed a slot at the 1995 Catalina Jazz Festival where he exposed his music to an American audience for the first time. Tempest entered the US Billboard Albums chart at number 14 shortly after the festival. Cook would go on to release six more albums into the 2000s including 2009's The Rumba Foundation, headline several festivals and open for legends such as Ray Charles and B.B. King.
