Jazz Articles about Cortex

About Cortex

Album Review

Live In New York constitutes the fourth outing by young Norwegian outfit Cortex. It's one of a stream of top notch dates emerging on the Portuguese Clean Feed label by a welter of interconnected bands from the burgeoning Scandinavian scene. All four members share a common background in jazz studies from Trondheim, but are now active in a variety of guises. Trumpeter Thomas Johansson appears on All Included's Satan in Plain Clothes (2015)and Friends & Neighbors' What's Wrong? (2016), while ...

Album Review

Cortex: Live in New York

Read "Live in New York" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
August 8, 2016

Do you remember when you first heard Ornette Coleman's The Shape Of Jazz To Come (Atlantic, 1959)? It could have been fifty years ago or five, but its life force remains. Its music was/is nearly impossible to ignore. The same can be said of the Norwegian quartet Cortex's Live In New York. It sizzles with a barely contained energy, one that has yet to be harnessed or become world-weary. This release is their fourth and the second for ...

Album Review

Cortex: Live!

Read "Live!" reviewed by Vincenzo Roggero

by Vincenzo Roggero
January 16, 2015

Bastano le prime battute di “Opening" per andare con il pensiero allo storico quartetto di Ornette Coleman e Don Cherry, che tanto scompiglio portò nel mondo del jazz agli inizi degli anni sessanta. Questi quattro giovanotti norvegesi non possono sconvolgere più di tanto un ring musicale che da anni è abituato ad ogni tipo di incontro con colpi bassi e anche proibiti, ma è indubbio che il loro Cortex Live! è un album consistente, ricco di energia, intensità e immediatezza ...

Album Review

Cortex: Live

by Glenn Astarita
October 14, 2014

As the marketing info implies, this Scandinavian quartet summons remembrances of the Ornette Coleman ensemble featuring Don Cherry performing on cornet. Yet by no means are these gentlemen copycats. Hence, each composition imparts a different story, whether the artists are melding an open-air sound with bursting breakouts and idiosyncratic intonations or generating aggressive free-form escapades on these compositions by cornetist Thomas Johansson. Other than some loosely designed Ornette inferences, these works come at you from a myriad of sharp angles, ...

Album Review

Cortex: Göteborg

Read "Göteborg" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
December 3, 2012

Norway's Cortex released its highly promising debut, Resection (Bolage), in 2011. The members of this high-octane quartet met during jazz studies in Trondheim, and began working as a band in 2007. Cortex follows the free jazz legacy of Ornette Coleman quartet with trumpeter Don Cherry, spicing it with wise, original compositions and uncompromising performances inspired by fellow powerful Scandinavian outfits such as Atomic, The Core and The Thing. Cortex's sophomore recording, Göteborg--named after the Swedish city where ...