Milen Kirov - Spatium (2021)

The title of this collection of pieces some written specifically for the album, some older ones comes from Distance, a composition I wrote in 2001 for trumpet and piano. I reimagined and reworked the piece for solo piano in 2017 and decided to use the Latin word spatium, because besides suggesting the distance between two geographical points or two people, it also means 'space' (the English word comes from spatium), cosmos, an interval of time... I liked he depth of its meaning, the multifaceted connotations that it evokes, and how it represents not only the feel and spirit of the pieces on the album, but also the distances between the land of my birth and the land of my current home, and between the three music traditions that find common ground in my work - Bulgarian, Western Euopean 'classical' and American blues and jazz. - Milen Kirov