"We had Cook Brothers Contracting renovate our home. And, should the occasion arise, I'll certainly call you again myself.Sincerely," - Sue H. The job was actually finished ahead of schedule.I would welcome the opportunity to sing your praises to prospective clients. I never had to worry about leaving her alone in the house.Your carpenters amazed me with their creative solutions to the many difficult situations an old house can offer, and their very thorough approach to each detail. They were so attentive and appreciative of her age and infirmities, and always treated her like she was a queen. I especially want to thank your tradesman for their wonderful attention to my mother and to her needs during the construction phases. I believe that every single person on your staff, including your subcontractors, must be selected not only for their skills, but for their kindness and ability to assure nervous homeowners they are in good hands. We were kept well informed throughout the project about what to expect each day, and when decisions had to be made, your staff was able to help me understand the ins and outs of the situation. Your company did everything possible to help at each phase of the project – helping us to focus on the design, especially to choose what we really wanted from a vast array of possibilities. I've never been involved in anything like this before, and had so many apprehensions at the beginning. did on the remodeling project for my house. It’s not so much looking backwards as it is just looking around, reflections on all that is human and divine and present, and the roads we’ve taken to get us there."I want to take a moment to write you and tell you how pleased I am with the wonderful job Cook Bros. He distills decades of friendship, brotherhood, family, love, learning, and loss into flickering piano portraits - impressionistic and fluid and reverent. Through composing the music, he began to reflect on specific and important presences in his life, and ends up capturing their essence via keys here. When Cook began these songs, he was in the headspace of meditating on the people in his support network, and those closest to him. The resulting "All These Years" record is near hymn-like, a collection of prayers or meditations, improvisations threaded together by feeling, by the things that matter most. It’s also where Cook’s wife, Heather, worked for years for his family, it’s like a second home. The church’s cavernous space has long been integral to Cook’s day-to-day life as an artist - a venue that suggests music as a higher power, and art-making as a form of worship - a place that elevates the act of writing a song to something beyond sacred. "All These Years" feels like starting over, or like a return, trimming everything back to its original starting place. Piano is where Cook is the most expressive, an easy, free flow of emotional output. These ten pieces came to life on a long-cared-for and much-loved one-hundred year-old Steinway over a week in the spring of 2021. Cook and Joseph have been close their entire lives, with Joseph being one of the people who knows the full depth of Cook’s relationship to the instrument. "All These Years" is Cook’s first solo instrumental album on his primary instrument, recorded at NorthStar Church of the Arts in Durham, NC by his cousin and collaborator Brian Joseph (Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens, Indigo Girls). In that way, "All These Years" is sort of the first proper introduction to Cook, to the way he can express himself with the most ease and reveal the deepest compartments of his heart. But even across all the work he’s done in his decades as a musician, he’s yet to release a proper piano album. A sweet and affable presence whose musical dexterity elevates every project he touches, Cook’s musical output and true sound has been hard to pin down. A prolific songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, solo artist, and in-demand musician whose collaborations have run the gamut of genre - as a founding member of beloved band Megafaun to work with The Blind Boys of Alabama, Bon Iver, Kanye West, and Hiss Golden Messenger, to name a few - Cook has always been a musician’s musician. For Phil Cook, it all started with piano.
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