Austin Cook - pianist/singer

Austin Cook rock's Kansas City as Jerry Lee Lewis

My husband and I just saw Austin play Jerry Lee Lewis in the Million Dollar Quartet in Kansas City on 3/21/12. He was simply amazing in this Broadway show and I urge everyone to see this show when it comes to your town. Austin really rocked the house. I've known Austin since he was a teen back in Kansas City and he has become an fabulous singer/pianist and I urge you to see him play any chance you can get.
Austin, keep up the great performances and we hope to see you in Kansas City again soon.

Don't know if I've ever heard anything as beautiful as this.

My boyfriend and I saw Austin Cook playing piano for six singers at the "Sweet and Hot: The Songs of Harold Arlen" revue at Chicago's Theatre on the Lake, a wonderful show for which he had also served as musical director. His piano accompaniment was extraordinary. He has at least five hands, and each one of them flows effortlessly along the full continuum, from deep passion to delicate whispers. Then at one point all the singers moved over to the piano, and Mr. Cook sang one song. His may have been more beautiful than any voice I've heard. I don't know. It was the kind of singing that knocks all other performances out of your head and changes the landscape in there. It wasn't just the incredible accompaniment, or the angelic clarity of the voice, the subtlety of nuance, or the absolute precision of pitch. It was also the feeling with which he sang -- completely real, as if he had actually become the love-struck innocent who was telling his lover, "The Dream's on Me." A couple lines into it my boyfriend and I looked at one another in disbelief, and he said "Holy [blank]!!!" and I just nodded. When the song was done the audience went nuts, and I gave it a standing ovation all by myself -- something that would have been dorky and embarrassing under normal circumstances, but I couldn't find any other way to register my sense of awe. When my friend and I got back to my place we spent the next hour combing the internet to learn more about him, and stumbled on a radio interview, where he sounded quite sane, cooperative, professional, enthusiastic, supportive, even humble. My new life's goal is to write a song that would do justice to that voice and that spirit.