Monday, October 16th, 2017
Timucua Arts Foundation, Gallery at Avalon Island and The Civic Minded 5 present
Cortex 
Gallery at Avalon Island
39 S. Magnolia Ave, Orlando
6:00 pm doors, 7:00 concert
An In-Between Series co-presentation
Donations encouraged

Well, it’s been about a year and a half since our shadowy organization has presented one of those energy jazz corkers. Peter Brötzmann Quartet, remember? An introduction to Cortex is appropriate. We haven’t spoken of them before. In the long tail career parlance of the improving jazz musician, this Norwegian quartet are the kids when reflected in relief of Brötzmann’s sixth decade of globetrotting.

Cortex are part of the Scandinavian renaissance drawing on the ideals of early U.S. free-jazz forms, using the instrumentation of the classic Ornette Coleman Quartet – saxophone, trumpet, double bass and drums. Coleman-esque are their forms based around knotty but catchy post-bop head melodies followed by less idiomatic jazz improvising. There is also an element of now-canonized ESP-Disk impertinence, where dynamics shift vertically to include irregular, and non-blues based sonic clouds.

Back to paragraph one: This quartet’s age is also evident in their brand. Brötzmann’s mythic, psyche-assaultive Machine Gun album features emotion-neutered clip art of machine gunning. Cortex? The album they are touring is Avant-Garde Party Music, sporting meme-globalism™ titles such as Grinder (yeah?) and the plausibly 90’s indie rock-channeling (If You Were) Mac Davis. The quartet of gentlemen here are all making their first Orlando showing. It’s possible we’ll see the bassist Ola Høyer again in 2018 as part of Paal Nilssen-Love’s Large Unit- to our ears, an alternate history sci-fi rendering of a post-apocalyptic jazz big band.

It’s been a stretch since we convened one of these cm5 affairs. Come on down to the Gallery. We’ll have that donation bar with beer, wine and Third Wave coffee. Take part in the Timucua instant arts community created at each event by appearing willing – described by composer Anthony Braxton as the “friendly experiencer.” We’ll see you there.