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Harry Pepl * 1945  † 2005
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Black-and-white photo taken from the stage: Harry Pepl looks over his shoulder into the camera, with an empty hall, a television camera and spotlights behind him.

Harry Pepl

Guitarist, composer and innovator of European jazz

Harry Pepl was a guitarist the like of whom this country has perhaps never produced a second time.

Martin Gasser, Kronen Zeitung, 2015

Harry Pepl on stage, looking back. Photo: Ralf Quinke

Born
10 September 1945, Vienna
Died
5 December 2005, Wiener Neustadt
Instruments
guitar, MIDI guitar, piano, drums
Method
Real-time Composing
Recorded for
ECM, Label Bleu, Amadeo, Universal, Fullmax Recordings
Teaching
Professor of jazz guitar, Graz

As a guitarist and innovator, Harry Pepl shaped Austrian and European jazz and was ranked internationally among the top guitarists of his time. He played with Benny Goodman, Jack DeJohnette, Dave Holland, Michel Portal, Enrico Rava and Dino Saluzzi, caused a sensation from Berlin to Montreux with Werner Pirchner, the Austrian composer and vibraphonist, as Jazzzwio, and later did so again with his US-Austrian band “Air Mail”.

Like Pat Metheny, he was one of the first jazz musicians anywhere to play the MIDI guitar, and he turned it into a tool for composing: for the “Schönberg Improvations” he used it to control a Bösendorfer (Vienna piano maker) computer grand piano, and with Real-time Composing he developed a method of his own for inventing music in the moment and capturing it at the same time.

Among the great guitarists of his time, his name carried weight. John Scofield called him “one of my favourites”, and John Abercrombie said: “He's great, he's like a machine gun.” He got to know Pat Metheny and Bill Frisell through his international festival work, and Metheny came specially to the Jazzspelunke, a jazz club in Vienna, to hear him.

He also shared stage and studio with Dave Liebman, Art Farmer, Lee Konitz, Charlie Mariano, Joachim Kühn, George Lewis, Don Moye, Barry Altschul, Marc Johnson, Toninho Horta, Daniel Humair, Jean-François Jenny-Clark, Mino Cinelu, Didier Lockwood, Jon Christensen, Tony Oxley, Herbert Joos, Wolfgang Dauner and Svend Asmussen. In “Air Mail” he played with Wolfgang Puschnig, Mike Richmond and Wolfgang Reisinger, and he appeared as a guest with the Vienna Art Orchestra, the Viennese jazz big band led by Mathias Rüegg, once alongside John Surman. He recorded for ECM (the renowned European jazz label) several times, the Kronos Quartet gave the world premiere of three of his pieces in Graz in 1991, and as professor of jazz guitar in Graz he shaped a generation of musicians, among them Wolfgang Muthspiel.

In the early 2000s the record company Universal released reissues and previously unreleased recordings in its Austrian Jazzart series, among them “Light Blues”, “Live At Miles Smiles” and the “Schönberg Improvations”. This was followed in 2009 by “Live In Concerts”, produced under the direction of his son Daniel Pepl, with the Jazzzwio concerts in Montreux and Innsbruck on CD and DVD. Since 2015 recordings from his estate have been released by the Vienna label Fullmax Recordings. For his 80th birthday the live album “Harry Pepl (tape) & The (Lonely) Single Swinger Band” was released and took second place in the category best jazz album of the year at the Austrian Jazz Award 2025 (award for jazz from Austria): today's musicians improvise live with his original tracks and enter into a dialogue with him. In this way a younger generation, too, can experience Harry Pepl on stage.

This archive documents his life and work on the basis of the estate and of research: biography, chronology, discography, catalogue of works, people, press archive and open data. It is published by his son Daniel Pepl, who administers the estate.

His life His music Who he played with Real-time Composing

Students such as Wolfgang Muthspiel still count him among the most important driving forces in recent European jazz history.

Ralf Dombrowski, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 2005

The Austrians Werner Pirchner and Harry Pepl were among the most original minds of European jazz in the seventies and eighties.

Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 2008

the most spectacular record of one of the most original guitar players of European Jazz in those years

Andreas Felber, liner notes to Schoenberg Improvisations, EmArcy, 2004

his very own instrument–the guitar–where he is one of Europe’s undisputed jazz masters

Stephen Ferguson, liner notes to Flow, PAO Records, 1996

Austrian guitarist Harry Pepl has gone a long and imperturbable way.

Harry Lachner, liner notes to Schönberg Improvations, Amadeo, 1990

was, in his active phase, one of the most important guitarists in the world

Ljubiša Tošić, Der Standard, 2005

All press quotes

Giant of improvisation

Le Monde

He was an amazing guitarist, pianist and composer. His harmonic, rhythmic and sound concepts were very unique!

Jack DeJohnette, Ö1, 2020

One of Europe’s leading jazz guitarists

neue musikzeitung, nach ORF, 2005

In the seventies there was hardly a faster jazz guitarist in Europe than the Austrian Harry Pepl.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 2005

More voices

Voices of fellow musicians, critics and Harry Pepl himself, freshly shuffled on every visit.

I think he was an international figure and definitely had his own voice.

Wolfgang Muthspiel, The San Diego Union-Tribune 2022

With his metallic, clear sound and his surprising chord progressions, Pepl developed into one of the most distinctive guitarists in Europe

Martin Laurentius und Axel Stinshoff, Jazz thing 2005

The guitarist and composer Harry Pepl may well be called Austria’s most independent and at the same time most uncompromising jazz voice.

Christian Rösner, Wiener Zeitung 1998

I do not just play over the harmony, but something really happens that surprises even me, harmonically too.

On his improvising, especially with new sounds on the guitar synthesiser; looking back in conversation with Nikolaus Kohler in 2005

Harry Pepl Conversation with Nikolaus Kohler, quoted in Kohler 2006, p. 121

All voices in the press archive

Ways into the archive

Cover: Live

From the estate · 2025

Live

Harry Pepl (tape) & The (Lonely) Single Swinger Band

The album by the live band formed anew in 2018, which brings Pepl's multitrack recordings from tape onto the stage and improvises along with them; released in the year of Pepl's 80th birthday.

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Milestones

  1. 1945 Born in Vienna Vienna
  2. 1952 First instrument: the accordion Vienna
  3. 1975 The Jazzzwio begins with Werner Pirchner Vienna
  4. 1977 Farewell to the ORF Big Band, move to Graz Graz
  5. 1980 Concerts with Benny Goodman in Berlin Berlin
  6. 1981 Jazzzwio at the Montreux Jazz Festival Montreux
  7. 1983 Air Mail finds its line-up Vienna
  8. 1983 ECM album with “Air, Love & Vitamins” Munich
  9. 1984 Full professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG) Graz

Full chronology

Musical partnerships (selection)

International

From Austria

All fellow musicians

Releases from the estate

To the discography

Currently catalogued digitally in the archive

117Releases 193Works 257Fellow musicians 398Press articles

The archive keeps growing: newspaper articles, photos and recordings from the estate are being digitised step by step.

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