"When people ask, 'Who do you listen to?' I say, 'I listen to the masters - and that can mean Miles or Chaka Khan.' When people ask, 'What's your favorite musical situation?' I say, 'I thrive on variety. Give me a room with my favorite players - a place where we can recreate the magic.'"

Carla Cook was born and raised in Detroit where, from the age of 5, music was just apart of growing up. If she wasn't signing in the Angelic Choir of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, she was dancing to Motown. In her teen years, she would expand that musical knowledge by studying voice, private piano, and string bass. European classical music was also a strong part of Carla's development and a serious focus for a period in her life. But it is jazz where Carla has made a successful career - creating music for the pure attraction to improvisation. "Since I've been influenced as much by instrumentalists as singers, it never dawned on me that I didn't have that same freedom."

After Detroit, Carla moved to Boston, where she earned a degree in Speech Communication. She now lives in New York, where her presence had afforded her continuous opportunities to work with gifted musicians. The variety of her work reflects her range as she has worked on projects with ESP (the former Miles Davis sideman), the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, as well as trombonist Craig Harris in The Nation of Imagination. You can even hear her as a character in the Sony Playstation game, "Parappa the Rapper II."

She performs worldwide with European touring as a major part of her musical career. From 1993-94, Carla served as a guest vocal and ensemble instructor at the Jazzschule in Basel, Switzerland, and Jazz and Rock Schule in Freiburg, Germany.

"I love working in Europe because the audiences recognize and respect jazz as American classical music. Imagine a conversation between Bach and Coltrane - now that would be interesting. I can see how they're not worlds apart. Both are timeless. Both improvised. And people will always be studying the foundation they established."