In the Fall of 2022, Phil Cook suddenly found himself living alone in a small home at the edge of field and forest in North Carolina’s Piedmont. For most of Cook’s four decades, he had resided near the hearts of the midsized Southern cities and Wisconsin towns he had called home, near the groan of traffic and hubbub of coffee shops. Such close quarters helped make the gregarious Cook a prolific collaborator, from cofounding his own Megafaun to working with The Blind Boys of Alabama, Bon Iver, Hiss Golden Messenger, and endless others.

But Cook’s closest neighbor now was a trailhead, his own alleyway into the woods of Orange County. So he went and listened, enraptured first by the stillness and then by the manifold birds. He began leaving his windowsill slightly cracked each night, so that the dawn chorus greeted him each morning. A zealous collector of voice memos, Cook began recording these tangled bird songs. He slowly joined them. With the sun finally high, Cook would listen to the day’s recordings and improvise in real time on the instrument that remains the first and most steadfast love of his musical life, the piano.

Appalachia Borealis—a deeply poignant and personal set of 11 piano meditations, built with the emotional range of a full and open existence—is, at least so far, the culmination of Cook’s career and life. Inspired by those windowsill improvisations, these compositions reflect not only the turmoil and sadness of a fraught time for Cook but also the hope, light, and joy of looking for the other side.

Cook spent so much of his 20s and 30s on the road, whether touring in bands of his own or serving as a sideman. But for the last five years, he’s largely been off the road, working through intense changes in his personal life while trying to figure out what music mattered most to him. He’s done records of soulful rock, acoustic beauty, and piano contemplation. All of it funnels into Appalachia Borealis—mirth, smiles, tears, worry. These 31 minutes flow like a graceful chronicle of endurance. Cook will return to the road for Appalachia Borealis, opening these songs that started on a windowsill to a still-wider world and opening up about the woe and wonder that inspired them. These are songs of becoming, then, about gathering up everything that’s already happened and moving toward whatever else you might still be. On Appalachia Borealis, Cook peers into the dark, sees a way forward, and sets it all to exquisite sound.