Press Reviews
“Georgui Kornazov is one of today’s most gifted and exciting trombone players.”
Franpi Barriaux.” Sun Ship
“Kornazov is an unerring rank musician as well as a first-class soloist.
By dint of hard work, he has achieved stunning virtuosity on a reputedly difficult instrument, as well as unique, vibrant and flexible sound.
…An inimitable texture that evokes the warmth of the human voice.
Gueorgui succeeds in fully expressing his jazz musician’s identity while remaining faithful to his origins, which can always be heard in the background.
…beautiful evidence of the cosmopolitan spirit that inspires this fantastic musician.”
Pascal Rozat, "La Coudée franche", Jazzman
“Gueorgui Kornazov is an accomplished musician, he is accurate and meticulous, without ever being affected. Better than charm, he likes magic, and it works.”
Jean-Paul Gavard, Les Immortels
“Kornazov is one of those jazz musicians that have a guiding line and their own sound.”
Franpi Barriaux, Sun Ship
“ Horizons is the new quintet of Bulgarian trombone-player and composer Gueorgui Kornazov, with which he not only expresses a diversity of influences but also the wish and desire to explore new territories.”
Pascal Rozat
“ This quintet offers genuine music in which you can here echoes from folk music and above all the open and passionate spirit of jazz.”
Michel Contat
“Kornazov’s music covers the whole range of possible atmospheres, from pensive beauty to stormy savagery.” Concerto
“Fine and delicate style, all in shades and subtleties, with refined design and clear atmosphere that make it stand out immediately.”
Félix Marciano
“As for Kornazov, we have long been impressed by the register of his expression. He has such technical mastery of his instrument that all emotions are felt in the way he plays. Those who have heard him know that this trombone player, who has collected prizes of excellence, is capable of playing just about anything and in any circumstances.
He keeps surprising us with his technique as well as his sharp sense of orchestration.”
Jean-Marc Gelin, Les dernières nouvelles du jazz
“Gueorgui Kornazov is a mixed world between Bulgaria and Western jazz, a skilful combination of irresistible melodies and contemporary means of expression.”
Yves Dorison www.culturejazz.net
Presse review “VIARA” :
“After Staro Vrémié in 2001 and Essence de rose in 2004, trombone player Gueorgui Kornazov signs a new stage in his career as a leader with a sublime album entitled Viara,
which means “hope”, “faith” in Bulgarian.” http://www.qobuz.com/
“A new album by the famous Bulgarian trombone player Gueorgui Kornazov
… He handles here the sense of composition and flamboyant orchestration with … dynamics!
Starting from very beautiful and rather simple melodies, Kornazov delineates a musical area and develops something different which ranges from the register of naked and sensitive emotion to the bright weaving of brass instruments which echo each other or unite in underlying very crude groove.”
Jean-Marc Gelin, Les dernières nouvelles du jazz
“The music in Viara is that type of jazz music intelligently arranged, the kind of music you want to hear and which you listen to again with pleasure. The melodies, which are composed in counterpoint style alternating with unison parts, stay in the memory of listeners. Kornazov’s music covers the whole range of possible atmospheres, from dreamy beauty to wild tempest.”
Concerto n°6
“Georgui Kornazov invents his own style in that beautiful lineage thanks to an elegant way of composing and arranging. In this album, he has carefully matched the textures of the trombone, soprano sax and guitar in a well balanced way.“
Yann Mens, La Croix
Cosmopolitan
“Stirring music, fusion of all European cultures, starting of course with the Eastern one, in the caukdron of jazz which remains a reference. Viara is an attractive achievement, one of these recordings that will stay in our hearts.”
Nicolas Benies, Rouge, a weekly radical magazine.
“His new CD entitled Viara is the most personal opus of this jazz musician. Throughout it is displayed not only soundness of tone and colour but also of profoundness. Avoiding too much brilliance, the musician through his compositions and orchestrations, mostly creates flexible figures. One might criticize the set for a lack of fluidity but this unevenness is due to the diverse states of mind that initiated the nine pieces that make up this set. Nevertheless, through rippling waves of strange sonorous light, spring up pungent effects by an artist who knows how to weave his jazz and organize it in a modest as well as impertinent way. This CD belongs to an intimist, nostalgic and loving genre. The brass instruments never interfere with the Slavonic and Balkan exhalations, on the contrary: everything comes up in light yet never sloppy strokes, which proves – if necessary – that Gueorgui Kornazov is an accomplished, precise and meticulous musician , yet never precious. To charm he prefers magic, and it works.”
Jean-Paul Gavard, Les Immortels
“With this recording, Gueorgui Kornazov offers a kind of jazz music which is both modern and very personal.
What is inherited from Central Europe really shows for the greatest of our pleasure; which is a very swaying and emotional component.
Gueorgui Kornazov affirms a serene atmosphere , which is never devoid of tension, just as a wave will always break. Alternating very relaxed musical atmosphere bordering nostalgia with long relentless rhythmical passages, he continuously attracts the listeners. It really is a delectable album.
The quality of the sound is very good. It is both fluid and limpid. It materializes a melodic part that is both tense and incredibly communicative. The brass parts are both sparkling and incredibly diverse. And what you hear is very transparent, without anything ethereal or sterile. The ever present substance and swing will be appreciated. Something you must hail and an artist to be discovered urgently !”
Laurent Thorin, Haute Fidélité
Translation: Jean Paul Magouet
« La musique creuse le ciel. » [Music gouges out the sky]
Charles Baudelaire
New Horizons of Georgi Kornazov
Afro-American music is by definition, all through its brief history, the fruit of fertilization, mixing, and multiple encounters, from Gypsy traditions and all folklore to the most sophisticated electronic inventions and treatments, passing through all the phases of the musical universe, the vast global sound system. There is no domain which jazz has shrank from confronting, at times even digesting the ingredients to form from them its own substance, one element of constant renewal. Jazz is indeed a music born of absence and of nothingness, a music that has never ceased to feed on its predecessors and neighbours. Giving rise to a creative state that transcends its own forms. Jazz continuously hazards encounters, transformation, disappearance, dissolution, and that is its only way of staying alive. In this movement, this rift, this margin, this urgency, the music has always found both the cause of its desire and the reason for its success. Also, if it wishes to live, and not merely survive, jazz must flee from itself; it must find other escape routes, other lines of force, other horizons.
Horizons: the new band of Georgi Kornazov, together with the soprano saxophonist Emile Parisien, the guitarist Manu Codjia, the double bassist Marc Buronfosse and the drummer Karl Jannuska. The disc bears the title Viara.
In Bulgarian «Viara» means hope, faith. Faith in one's art. Faith in art. Art, not as a response to death, as Malraux (a French writer and minister of culture) said in his time, but, today, a struggle for life. Whom to struggle against, whom to assault when injustice haunts the air in our lungs, the space in which we think, and the silence and stupor of the stars? Our revolt is just as badly conceived as the world that evokes it, wrote Cioran. So, despite everything, resistance if not revolt. And hope. This music called jazz dwells in a place of resistance to the mechanical usage of music. What distinguishes jazz from the machine music that surrounds us is that jazz, rightly, awakens us, shakes us in the midst of sound.
The music of Georgi Kornazov attempts a great density of ideas and sounds. He dreams of new horizons, of new surprises, tinted with wise interplay, with nuanced feeling and unheard sounds. His quintet masters all the dynamics of jazz, fiery tenderness, intelligent interjections, dovetailed virtuosity and lyricism, a collision between tradition and improvisation, always animated by a persistent freshness, a structure that never bores, allowing us to discover surprises at the turning into each sidestreet and other lightened pathways taken. Sophisticate compositions, iridescence in the timbres, a collective power in their playing, an orchestral dynamic, and a fluidity of architectures, this is a group of extreme musicality, mobility and plasticity. This powerfully lyrical music arrives naturally; it never strives, being strictly a function of the forces generated between the five musicians and through them, to us. It pours forth with the abundant clarity of something indispensable.
"Georgi Kornazov is now firmly anchored in the french music scene. His compositions and arrangements are like bridges between Bulgarian folk music and European jazz. Sometimes very nimble, sometimes very romantic and moving, always played with an intense emotion, the music played by this Quintet is really and just amazing."
Thionville Action Musicale, february 2006
"Kornazov composes with his memories, (...) of songs and melodies from his childhood and find the right words."
Jonathan Duclos-Arkilovitch, Jazzman
"Jazz never stops to display this seeming contradiction between uprooting an rooting down. And this dualism is focused on in the title " Occidental Orient ", one of Georgi Kornazov compositions, so reminiscent of his native Bulgaria." "Jazz has now become his language, and shows lots of diverse influences that enrich it without limiting it."
Vincent Bessieres, Jazzman
"...Georgi Kornazov shows a wide capacity of expression on the trombone (...). In spite of their youth, his musicians are nonetheless amongst the most talented an sought after jazz musicans in France (...) " A splendid soul (...)"
Jazz Club in Auxerre
"A beautiful wild energy, dreams of wide areas and imaginary travels emanate from this range of sounds"
Pannonica in Nantes
"A fluid, sophisticated, powerfully lyrical quartet, always ready to upset compositionnal limits and to give free rein to individual inspiration, they combine with a great sense of alchemy, a strong taste for melody and a high inclination for improvisation."
Franck Medioni