Dr. R. Kent Cook is an Associate Professor of Piano at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois.  He keeps an active performing schedule as soloist and chamber musician and has appeared in many venues around the United States and abroad with performances in Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, England, and Italy.  In the Midwest, he has had recent performances in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, and Ohio.

R. Kent Cook hails from Odessa, Texas where he began to play the piano at age six.  He attended Baylor University to pursue a career in dentistry, but soon abandoned that goal to begin serious study of the piano.  After finishing a Piano Performance Degree with honors under the guidance of Roger Keyes, he continued his studies at Indiana University receiving both a Masters and Doctorate in Piano Performance while working with Leonard Hokanson, Michel Block, James Tocco, and Karen Shaw.  In 1992-93, he also studied with Herbert Seidel as a Fulbright Scholar at the Hochschule für Musik in Frankfurt, Germany.

Dr. Cook joined the piano faculty at Illinois Wesleyan University in 1999, has since become very active in the region as an adjudicator and has taught numerous master classes for a variety of schools and organizations throughout the Midwest.  In January of 2002, Cook released his first compact disc recording on the Novitas label.  It is entitled Nachtstücke and is a recording of 12 Nocturnes by 7 different composers including Chopin, Liszt, and Schumann.

Before teaching at IWU, he was on the piano faculty at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana.  During the summer he teaches at the Illinois Wesleyan University Chamber Music Festival, and has taught at the Indiana University Piano Academy, and the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp.