Having devoted his life to music, jazz trombonist Georgi Kornazov never ceases to surprise us with the scope of his inspiration. He lives in France but invariably shares his work with audiences in Bulgaria. Just as few months ago we presented a compilation of music composed by him and recorded together with pianist Leonardo Montana, the album called Suznanie or Conscience. He told us then that some of the pieces had been rearranged for big band and three soloists, and that he had had a specific orchestra in mind – the Bulgarian National Radio Big Band. And the soloists the music was written for are Rossen Zahariev-Rocco (trumpet and flugelhorn), Antony Donchev and the author himself.

The Bulgarian National Radio Big Band and the soloists have been working on Georgi Kornazov’s project for some days now. The concert will take place in Studio No. 1 of the BNR today, 30 September. The pieces actually combine into a suite in 13 parts.

“We have now almost completed the studio recordings of these pieces with the idea of releasing them on CD,” says Georgi Kornazov. “We have been friends with Rocco for many years and we have worked together many times, whereas Antony Donchev is one of my jazz tutors. I read somewhere that there are 17 degrees of human consciousness. To me, they are polarized in different extremes. It is said that the highest forms of conscience is carried by the teachers of the human race – Buddha, Krishna, Christ. And the lowest are dictators and people with a criminal mind. The true artistes, the people who never stop giving, they soar up, higher and higher. They live for the stage and have no material aspirations. It is the only way they know. The music we are presenting took me 4-5 months to compose. All parts of the suite have different names – Morning, Sadness, Conscience… In terms of technique, they are not difficult at all. The problem the performers will have to tackle is how to bind them in one whole, the way they were written.”

English version: Milena Daynova