Former Sony/Columbia has been called a “man of mystery” by JazzTimes, “pianist-in-exile” by Time Out New York, and although he has been highly praised by the likes of Tony Williams and Ahmad Jamal, remains largely unknown to the public. Shook is an acoustic jazz pianist—one who demonstrates a wide scope of feeling from the simple to the complex, the conventional to the unconventional, and from the softest, most lush ballads, to the fiercest, hard-driving jazz. “It’s all the same to me,” Shook explains. “I don’t distinguish between different moods—it’s about nothing but the groove. That’s why I put the same energy into a slow tune as a fast tune.”