Life

There is so much: when I start telling it, everything comes crashing down on my head, all the sounds, all the notes, the music and the experiences, actually the whole world!

Vienna and the early years

Harry Pepl was born in Vienna on 10 September 1945 and grew up in Floridsdorf, Vienna’s 21st district north of the Danube.² In the first post-war years his mother left the family and went to the USA without the children; Harry grew up with his great-aunt and foster mother Hermine “Mina” Janda. His son Daniel sees this experience as ever present in his music, and the cover of the piano album “Consequence” shows Harry with her in 1950.³ At home, people listened to jazz as readily as to opera and Viennese song (Wienerlied). His father was a „Riesen-Jazzfan“ [“huge jazz fan”] who listened to Count Basie, his grandmother preferred Schrammel music, the traditional Viennese folk music for violins, guitar and accordion; according to the Kleine Zeitung, a daily newspaper from Graz, his father whistled him the standards that the occupation radio played.⁴ Vienna was occupied by the four Allies from 1945 to 1955, and through the American stations, the Rot-Weiß-Rot network for the civilian population and the forces’ radio Blue Danube Network, young Viennese heard jazz and swing on a large scale for the first time.⁵ At seven Pepl was given an accordion. At eight, at an accordion world championship, he heard a Yugoslav musician improvise; he later called it the „Kick zum Improvisieren“ [“the kick to improvise”].⁶ Playing from sheet music soon lost its appeal; he began to play freely and learned the piano at a Viennese music school.⁷

At 13 he bought himself a guitar for a hundred schillings.⁸ He listened to records by Tal Farlow and Johnny Smith, then by Wes Montgomery, Jim Hall and Barney Kessel, and played along until every note, phrasing included, was in place; sheet music for this kind of music hardly existed at the time. His „Fernstudium“ [“distance learning”] with Jim Hall and Wes Montgomery, as it was later put, consisted of records.⁹ By day he wrote arrangements for dance music; after the evening's performances he practised the solos of Jim Hall and Wes Montgomery until the early hours.¹⁰ He studied classical guitar in Karl Scheit's class at the music academy in Vienna; for the entrance examination he played Mozart's “Turkish March” with a plectrum.¹¹

Around 1960 he played in a Viennese youth band: a photo from the estate shows him on guitar, with accordion and drums, alongside Blacky Brandstätter, Franz Handler and Karl Komarek, who later played with the Hubbubs.¹²

In the early 1960s he played with the Austrian Evergreens, a Viennese dance and beat band that the Kleine Zeitung calls the “Austrian Aces”. In 1962 the single “Susi-Twist / Tabu” appeared, followed in 1964 by “Skinny Minny / Olymp” with his composition “Olymp” on the B-side. He toured with the band and accompanied Josephine Baker in Seefeld.¹³ On 1 January 1967, aged 21, he joined the union for the arts and liberal professions (Gewerkschaft Kunst und freie Berufe) of the Austrian Trade Union Federation, musicians' section.¹⁴ At the jazz department of the Vienna Conservatory, today’s Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna (MUK), he met the pianist Peter Ponger in the early 1970s, with whom he played in a quartet at the Fledermausbar in Vienna.¹⁵ In the 1970s Pepl was in demand in studios, toured with Peter Alexander, the most popular German-language entertainer of the post-war era, played with Toni Stricker, the Austrian jazz violinist, and the Viennese singer-songwriter André Heller and was guitarist and soloist of the ORF Big Band (ORF: Austria's public broadcaster); in 1976 the band's LP “Leave Me” was released with him as soloist.¹⁶ In 1974 he can be seen in an ORF television recording as a Heuriger guitarist (musician in a Viennese wine tavern) alongside the painter and singer Arik Brauer, a rare recording shown again by ORF III (the ORF's culture and information channel).¹⁷ He did not set much store by the boundaries between entertainment and jazz: „Mir ist das Wurscht, daß das Jazz heißt“ [“I don't care that it's called jazz”], he told the Wochenpresse, a Viennese weekly news magazine, in 1988.¹⁸

ORF Big Band and Harry Pepl, 1976

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At the same time he was searching for a jazz of his own: in the Harald Neuwirth Konsort, in the Erich Kleinschuster Sextet, in Albert Mair's Conception M, with his trio Hip Jargon and in Martin Mumelter's Concertodrom, which in 1975 brought classical musicians and improvisers together and travelled as far as the Edinburgh Festival.¹⁹ Around 1975 he played in a duo with Lee Konitz at a concert. This, he said, was „der erste Impuls“ [“the first impulse”] for him „so frei zu machen“ [“to free himself up in that way”].²⁰ With the teaching post at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, which he took up in 1977, he left studio work behind; the section on his years as a teacher tells that story.²¹

Jazzzwio and Austria Drei

Pepl brought the vibraphonist Werner Pirchner into his quartet Hip Jargon in 1975. During a break in rehearsals the two played “Stella by Starlight” as a duo and realised at once how well they sounded together. This became the Jazzzwio, which according to JazzEcho was Pepl's most important project.²² Guitar and vibraphone, without bass or drums: Joachim-Ernst Berendt found „dass der Sound Vibrafon/Gitarre noch reizvoller ist als der Vibrafon/Piano-Klang“ [“that the sound of vibraphone and guitar is even more appealing than the sound of vibraphone and piano”].²³ Der Standard, a Vienna daily, wrote that the duo had caused „international zwischen Berlin und Montreux mit einer subtilen und intensiven Form der Kammermusik Furore“ [“a sensation internationally, between Berlin and Montreux, with a subtle and intense form of chamber music”].²⁴ Runo Ericksson wrote about Pepl and Pirchner in the liner notes to his LP “Omnibus”: “they play like two people in love with each other”.²⁵ On 1 and 2 December 1979 the duo recorded the album “Gegenwind” in a small studio on the Bisamberg near Vienna; it was released by Mood Records in Stuttgart.²⁶

On 12 July 1981 the Jazzzwio played at the Montreux Jazz Festival (renowned jazz festival in Switzerland). Pepl had been called to the telephone in Graz during a lesson and had agreed to appear in the guitar programme, but only as a duo with Pirchner. „Die waren alle begeistert. Eine Sensation eigentlich“ [“They were all delighted. A sensation, actually”], he told the Wochenpresse, which called the evening the first major step in his international career.²⁷ The live recording was released by WEA as “Live, Montreux 1981”. In January 2009 the record company Universal reissued the recordings from Montreux and Innsbruck (1984), together with a video directed by Daniel Pepl, as “Live in Concerts”. The Kurier, a Vienna daily, called Pepl and Pirchner „zwei originelle heimische Musiker, die beide viel zu früh gehen mussten und unvergessen sind“ [“two original Austrian musicians who both had to go far too early and are unforgotten”]; the Kronen Zeitung, Austria’s largest-circulation daily, wrote: „Wenn es Klassiker des österreichischen Jazz gibt, hier ist einer!“ [“If there are classics of Austrian jazz, here is one!”]²⁸

Jazzzwio live at the Montreux Jazz Festival, 12 July 1981 (part 1)

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Jazzzwio live at the Montreux Jazz Festival, 12 July 1981 (part 2)

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Alongside this, Pepl played in the quartet Austria Drei with Pirchner, the bassist Adelhard Roidinger and the drummer Todd Canedy, which recorded its only album in Munich in July 1979. He had originally written the piece “Boo Bop” on it for four guitars from his Graz class.²⁹ From 1979 to 1982 he was a guest with the Vienna Art Orchestra, the Viennese jazz big band led by Mathias Rüegg, in 1980 he played in The String Summit at the New Jazz Meeting in Baden-Baden, and there were also Runo Ericksson's Omnibus, The Loss and Adelhard Roidinger's ECM (the renowned European jazz label) album “Schattseite” (recorded in 1981).³⁰

At the Saalfelden jazz festival in the province of Salzburg in September 1980, Jack DeJohnette spontaneously joined in during a performance by the Jazzzwio. In June 1982 Pirchner, Pepl and DeJohnette recorded an album with the producer Manfred Eicher at Tonstudio Bauer in Ludwigsburg, released by ECM in 1983; Pepl's composition “Air, Love & Vitamins” can be heard on it for the first time.³¹ „Das ist das erste Mal, dass wir wirklich über die Mauer schauen“ [“This is the first time that we are really looking over the wall”], Pepl told the Austrian jazz magazine Jazzlive at the time.³² Like “Cracked Mirrors” later, the record was awarded the German Record Critics' Award (Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik).³³ In May 1985 the duo, with Don Moye on drums, played at the festival “Beyond the Sound of Music: New Austria / New York”, on which the New York Times reported. The last documented concerts took place in October 1985, with Barry Altschul on drums and Walter Schmocker on bass, among them on 28 October at the jazz festival in Niš, which was captured on the LP “Naissus Jazz 85”; Pirchner then turned to composition, and the two went their separate ways by mutual agreement.³⁴

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

Jazzzwio at the Naissus Jazz Festival in Niš, 28 October 1985

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With Benny Goodman

In 1980 and 1981 Pepl played in Benny Goodman's band. In November 1980 Goodman brought him in for two concerts at the Berlin Philharmonie, with Don Haas on piano, Peter Witte on bass and Charly Antolini on drums. “Harry Pepl's Blues” came about spontaneously at the rehearsal; the recordings were released in 1996 as “Berlin 1980”.³⁶

With Goodman he also appeared in front of the television cameras, for example in “René Kollo: Ich lade gern mir Gäste ein” (“I like to invite guests”), the gala show in which the opera star René Kollo, celebrated Wagner tenor of the Bayreuth Festival, welcomed international stars on German ZDF television from 1978 to 1984. The German-Austrian production often aired over the Christmas holidays, at a time when there were only three television channels. In 1981 in Rome the quartet recorded jazz versions of the main theme for Dino Risi's film “Fantasma d'Amore” starring Romy Schneider and Marcello Mastroianni, with a score by Riz Ortolani. In September 1981 the band appeared at the Tivoli (amusement park and concert venue) in Copenhagen; the television recording has survived.³⁷

Benny Goodman at the Tivoli, Copenhagen, September 1981

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For Goodman, Pepl played with a small amplifier, without reverb or delay, „wie der Großvater von Charlie Christian“ [“like Charlie Christian's grandfather”]. It had not been his music, he said, but „ein Riesenerlebnis“ [“a tremendous experience”]. He turned down a further concert in Vienna.³⁸ Goodman sent him a photograph with the dedication “To Harry, a great guitarist, my best, Benny”.³⁹

ECM, Air Mail and the Portal Unit

At the suggestion of the drummer Wolfgang Reisinger, Air Mail, Pepl's US-Austrian band, came into being in 1983. By the autumn of 1983 the line-up was settled: Pepl, Wolfgang Puschnig (alto saxophone, flute), the American bassist Mike Richmond, specially flown in and the man after whom the band is named, and Reisinger.⁴⁰ The breakthrough came at the Moers festival (renowned festival for jazz and improvised music in North Rhine-Westphalia) on Whit Monday, 11 June 1984. It was followed by “Prayer for Peace” (Moers Music, recorded in February 1985) and “Light Blues”, recorded live in Wels in July 1987, released by Amadeo (former Vienna label for jazz and classical music) in 1988 and reissued by Universal in 2001.⁴¹ Air Mail rehearsed „wie eine Popband“ [“like a pop band”]: the themes were played to the others rather than written down and practised in unison until they were secure. „Da haben wir wirklich ziemlich verrückt geübt“ [“We really practised like crazy”], said Pepl.⁴² Puschnig and Reisinger played with him for seven years; Puschnig said in retrospect: „Ich habe einfach seine musikalische Sprache gelernt.“ [“I simply learned his musical language.”]⁴³ Air Mail's last concert took place in 1993 at the festival in Raab.⁴⁴

Air Mail live at the Amiens jazz festival, 1986

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From 1984 Pepl played with the French clarinettist and saxophonist Michel Portal: first on 23 September 1984 at the Schlachthof in Graz with George Lewis, Joachim Kühn, Jean-François Jenny-Clark and Daniel Humair, then in Paris at the Théâtre de la Ville and the Centre Pompidou, and at French festivals. He can be heard on Portal's studio album “Turbulence” and on “Men's Land”, recorded live in Amiens in May 1987 with Dave Liebman, Jenny-Clark, Jack DeJohnette and Mino Cinelu.⁴⁵ Le Monde called him a „Giganten der Improvisation“ [“giant of improvisation”].⁴⁶ In October 1986 he recorded the ECM album “Volver” with the quintet of Enrico Rava and Dino Saluzzi, including his piece “Ballantine for Valentine”, and went on a three-month European tour with the band.⁴⁷

For “Cracked Mirrors”, his own ECM album, Pepl played with the flugelhorn player Herbert Joos in a studio in the Wachau in February 1987; Jon Christensen added the drums afterwards in Oslo. The impetus and the advance funding came from the Graz promoter Heimo Steps.⁴⁸ The album was released on 30 May 1988. It is the first on which Pepl makes defining use of the MIDI guitar, and it received the German Record Critics' Award.⁴⁹ ECM announced three musicians „die auch in avancierten Spieltechniken mit viel Sinnlichkeit und Wärme zu improvisieren imstande sind“ [“who are capable of improvising with great sensuousness and warmth even in advanced playing techniques”]; one review identified Pepl as „einen der innovativsten Gitarristen des gesamteuropäischen Raumes“ [“one of the most innovative guitarists of the whole European region”].⁵⁰ After the concert at the Posthof in Linz in April 1988, Robert Urman wrote of a „Trio der Extraklasse“ [“top-class trio”].⁵¹ In December 1988 the trio, with Tony Oxley on drums, toured Austria and played at the Dieselstraße in Esslingen, where the Eßlinger Zeitung marvelled that Pepl played „ein fulminantes Schlagzeugsolo auf der Gitarre“ [“a spectacular drum solo on the guitar”].⁵² „Der österreichische Musiker Harry Pepl ist ein international gefragter Mann“ [“The Austrian musician Harry Pepl is a man in demand internationally”], wrote the Wochenpresse.⁵³

In May 1987 Pepl shared the stage with the saxophonist Karlheinz Miklin and two major figures of the New York scene: the bassist Ron McClure, who had played with Charles Lloyd and Keith Jarrett, and the drummer Billy Hart from Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi band; the two were then playing together in the band Quest. A concert at the Katholisches Studentenhaus Münzgraben in Graz, Austria, survives as a VHS recording.

Karlheinz Miklin, Harry Pepl, Ron McClure, Billy Hart, Graz, May 1987

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Harry Pepl, Herbert Joos and Jon Christensen at the Stadtgarten in Cologne, 1989

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Ralf Dombrowski summed up his playing in his obituary in the Süddeutsche Zeitung: Pepl had shaped a playing style which, “with expansive arcs of tension, unexpected harmonic progressions and clear, at times metallic sounds, expanded the expressive range of his instrument melodically and rhythmically”.⁵⁴ Colleagues from the USA held him in high regard. John Scofield said of him: “He is one of my favourites”, John Abercrombie: “He's great, he's like a machine gun.” He got to know Pat Metheny and Bill Frisell through his international festival work, first at the Jazz in Neuwied festival (Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany), later at concerts and workshops for the NDR (Norddeutscher Rundfunk, public broadcaster for northern Germany); where he played is shown in the overview Festivals and venues. He once helped Frisell out with strings at a gig.⁵⁵ Metheny came specially to the packed Jazzspelunke, a jazz club in Vienna's Dürergasse, to hear Pepl, who was playing there with Werner Pirchner, Marc Johnson and Joris Dudli. Pepl remembered: “We were just playing ‘Air, Love and Vitamines’ when Pat came in, and he was delighted.”⁵⁶ Metheny once joked that he would love to have a guitar duel with him.⁵⁷

How deeply Pepl, for all his modernity, was rooted in the jazz guitar tradition is shown by a memory from the Titanic, a fashionable club in Vienna's Theobaldgasse at the time. Pepl was playing there with Air Mail, with Wolfgang Puschnig, Mike Richmond and Wolfgang Reisinger, when the power failed in the middle of the set. Only the candles on the tables gave light. While people hectically searched for the fault, Pepl began to play a Wes Montgomery tune on his own, quietly, acoustically and entirely in the style of his model, and the room quickly fell silent and reverent.⁵⁸ Years later, according to Porgy & Bess (Vienna jazz club), guitarists such as Abercrombie and Scofield still always asked the same question: “And how is Harry?”⁵⁹

Composer

In the late 1980s Pepl came to the fore as a composer for chamber ensembles. He called his method Real-time Composing or Instant Composing: he improvised on the MIDI guitar voice by voice, had the result printed out as a score and did not revise it afterwards. In 1990 the programme booklet of the Musikverein (historic concert hall of the Society of Friends of Music) spoke of a process in which „das Werk in dem Augenblick, in welchem es erfunden wurde, auch schon schriftlich fixiert ist“ [“the work is already set down in writing at the very moment in which it was invented”]. His way of working is described on a separate page on Real-time Composing.⁶⁰

In the moment when I make music or compose with inspiration, which for me is one and the same, I believe in the absolute: in the truth in which all opposites coincide.

On 16 March 1989 the Ensemble Wien performed his “Ballade for Mr. Dinozo”, dedicated to Dino Saluzzi, in the Brahms-Saal of the Musikverein; on 14 December 1989 “Grogos” followed there, a commission from the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde.⁶² On 27 February 1990 the Ensemble Kontrapunkte under Peter Keuschnig devoted a composer portrait to him in the Brahms-Saal; Pepl himself played guitar with a MIDI system, and the piano sound came from a Bösendorfer 290 SE computer grand piano.⁶³ In February 1991 Thomas Larcher played seven of his works in the ORF Tyrol studio.⁶⁴ On 3 December 1991 the internationally renowned Kronos Quartet gave the world premieres of “Moving Navel”, “String Quartet No. 8” and “Obsession” at the Orpheum, a concert venue, in Graz, arranged through Heimo Steps.⁶⁵ For STUDIO PERCUSSION graz he wrote “Anspannen, Überspannen, Abspannen” for percussion ensemble and tape, premiered on 11 March 1992 at the Orpheum.⁶⁶ On 6 May 1993 the Artis Quartet played in the Brahms-Saal the string quartet “Über kurz oder lang, von der Weite und der Enge”, written that February. „Darf man von Pepl nur das Unerwartete erwarten“ [“May one expect only the unexpected from Pepl”], the programme booklet quoted a review. The Kurier thought the „fragile, Trauer vermittelnde Werk“ [“fragile work conveying sorrow”], placed between Beethoven and Brahms, was „als Sandwich-Einlage zu schade“ [“too good to serve as a sandwich filling”]. During a quiet passage a thunderstorm set in outside: „Es war eine unglaubliche Stimmung, als auf einmal das Rauschen des Regens einsetzte.“ [“The atmosphere was incredible when all of a sudden the sound of the rain set in.”]⁶⁷

The album “Schönberg Improvations” was made in Vienna in November 1989. Pepl played the piano parts into a Bösendorfer 290 SE via the MIDI guitar, first the left hand, then the right; Dave Liebman, Wolfgang Reisinger and Johannes Enders joined him. Instead of six days, the sessions in the studio beneath the Vienna Konzerthaus, one of the city’s two great concert halls, took nine. When Pepl wanted more time, the star tenor José Carreras was already booked for the following day. Pepl replied laconically that he would talk to Carreras and ask him to wait; in return he would play guitar for him some time, and Carreras could also “sing a little something” on one of his records. So recalls the studio owner Richard Österreicher Jr.⁶⁸ At the presentation concert at the Vienna Konzerthaus on 7 February 1990 the grand piano played by itself, with Pepl operating only the sustain pedal. „Musikalischer Quantensprung“ [“Musical quantum leap”], judged the magazine Tschin Bumm.⁶⁹ In 2004, in the liner notes to the CD edition, Andreas Felber called the record the „bisher kompromissloseste Dokument seines Prinzips des Instant Composing“ [“most uncompromising document to date of his principle of Instant Composing”].⁷⁰

In June 1992 his quartet with Claus Stötter, Paul Nowinski and Jojo Mayer played in New York at the invitation of the Knitting Factory and recorded “N.Y.C. Impressure” the day after. „Mir fiel selber an mir auf, daß ich dort völlig anders spiele als daheim“ [“I noticed about myself that I play completely differently there than at home”], Pepl told the magazine Jazzlive.⁷¹ In May 1994 the Salzburger Nachrichten, a Salzburg daily, judged that the record „zum Aufregendsten zählt, das in den letzten Jahren hierzulande produziert worden ist“ [“is among the most exciting things produced in this country in recent years”], and in December named it the Austrian jazz album of the year, in its author's view. In Der Standard, Ljubiša Tošić heard a phrasing that was „reizvoll und angenehm unberechenbar“ [“appealing and pleasantly unpredictable”], and the Kronen Zeitung wrote: „Die Wandlungsfähigkeit gehört zu Pepl wie die Hinwendung zu verschiedenen (Komponier-)Techniken.“ [“Versatility is part of Pepl, as is the turn to different (composing) techniques.”]⁷² The State of Lower Austria honoured him with its annual culture prizes for music in 1991 and 1998; in 1998 the Kurier introduced him as „Gitarrist und Pianist von Weltruf aus Hernstein“ [“guitarist and pianist of world renown from Hernstein”].⁷³

New Yorkers are flabbergasted every time they hear that I come from the Austrian mountains.

The Austrian federal government supported the composer as well. The Kunstbericht 1996, the government’s annual report to the Austrian parliament on federal arts funding, lists a composition grant of 60,000 schillings for him (about 4,360 euros).⁷⁵ From autumn 1999 Pepl himself helped to shape the funding of composition in Austria: together with the composers Paul Hertel and Michael Radulescu he sat on juries of the arts section of the Federal Chancellery, in 1999 for the Förderungspreis für Musik (a federal music prize) in the category of orchestral works, in 2000 for the Staatsstipendien (state grants) for composers and in the second half of 2001 for the composition grants.⁷⁶

Teacher in Graz

In 1976 the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (Kunstuniversität Graz) offered Pepl the leadership of its training class in jazz guitar. He accepted and in 1977 ended his contract with the ORF Big Band: „Ich entschied mich, zu unterrichten, und nur noch wirklich Jazz zu spielen, und den Kommerz und das Studio als Job hinter mir zu lassen.“ [“I decided to teach and to play nothing but real jazz from then on, and to leave commerce and the studio as a job behind me.”]⁷⁷ In 1984 he became a full professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. He taught until the mid-1990s.⁷⁸ According to his short biography of 2000, he also gave seminars at the Hamburg University of Music and Theatre (Germany), where the guitarist Andreas Willers, among others, studied with him, and taught at the International Jazz Academy St. Pölten (1992) and the Lower Austrian Jazz Academy Zeillern (1990 to 1994).⁷⁹ The Graz jazz scholar Michael Kahr counts him among the musicians who shaped jazz life in Graz over a long period as soloists and leaders of successful projects.⁸⁰ „Der Gitarreprofessor zu Graz gilt international als einer der besten seines Faches“ [“The guitar professor in Graz is regarded internationally as one of the best in his field”], wrote the Kleine Zeitung in 1988.⁸¹

Teaching was itself a source of ideas for him: „Durch das ständige Vorspielen machte ich mir immer selber Gedanken, was man da noch machen könnte.“ [“By constantly playing for the students I kept thinking for myself about what else one could do there.”]⁸² To his students he passed on this advice: „Wichtig ist, die individuelle Linie zu finden, dazu heißt es üben, üben, üben.“ [“What matters is to find your own individual line, and for that it's practise, practise, practise.”]⁸³ Guido Jeszenszky, who began studying with him in 1977, remembers a teacher who turned up with a different guitar each time, was forever searching for sounds and played for almost the whole lesson.⁸⁴ In May 1982 Larry Coryell came to the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz and played a jam session with Pepl, „von dem er sehr beeindruckt war“ [“by whom he was very impressed”], as the Steirerkrone reported.⁸⁵ Pepl's students included Wolfgang Muthspiel, Peter Havlicek, Guido Jeszenszky and Helmut Weinhandl; Gerald Gradwohl said in 2017 that Pepl had taught and inspired him.⁸⁶ In 2002 Wolfgang Muthspiel told the Falter, Vienna’s weekly city paper, that his time with Pepl had been “very formative”: “The lessons with him at the conservatory were like an extended concert.”⁸⁷ According to Martin Schaberl’s 2004 master’s thesis on Muthspiel, Pepl was his only jazz guitar teacher at the Graz jazz department; the Swiss drummer Jojo Mayer calls Pepl there Muthspiel’s “early teacher and mentor”.⁸⁸ In 2022 he remembered his teacher as “an important guitar player” with a unique sound and a great sense of time, to him an international figure with a voice of his own.⁸⁹ The Viennese guitarist Andy Manndorff came to him privately; according to Pepl's son Daniel Pepl, he was his father's first student, asking for lessons around 1971 at the age of 14. Manndorff, later a close friend, said looking back that Pepl had been “the only teacher who could teach me anything”.⁹⁰ Outside Graz, the Vienna Master Courses list him among their faculty since 1975 for jazz guitar.⁹¹ JazzEcho saw in him „mit seiner eigenwilligen Vorstellung von Harmonisierungen, Melodieführungen, Sound und Rhythmik eine wichtige Stilalternative zum afroamerikanischen Modell“ [“with his idiosyncratic ideas of harmonisation, melodic lines, sound and rhythm, an important stylistic alternative to the Afro-American model”].⁹² After his death the former rector of the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, Otto Kolleritsch, called him a „begnadeten Gitarristen“ [“truly gifted guitarist”] and an „Ausnahmeerscheinung“ [“exceptional figure”].⁹³ For the great jazz musicians who came to Graz he was, according to Heimo Steps, “Mister Graz”.⁹⁴

The first thing that comes to mind [is] the authority on time […]. And on the guitar perhaps the one who, in that respect, has gone further than any other musician. I love the way Pat Metheny handles time. I think it swings completely. […] But what Harry Pepl ‘pulls off’ is another planet. And how flexible his time is, so that it doesn’t all just run within a fixed rhythmic grid.

After Pepl's departure, guest lecturers looked after jazz guitar at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, among them the Viennese guitarist Karl Ratzer (1999 to 2003), until the professorship went to Pepl's former student Guido Jeszenszky in 2004.⁹⁶

I feel committed to musical truthfulness, and I think and play on several rhythmic levels.

The home studio in Hernstein and the Lonely Single Swinger Band

Around 1980 Pepl moved to Hernstein in Lower Austria and set up a recording studio in the cellar of his house. Whenever he went down there to make music, he would often say, half ironic, half serious: „Ich geh jetzt ins Bergwerk“ [“I’m off to the mine now”].⁹⁸ „Ich will möglichst alles selber machen“ [“I want to do as much as possible myself”], he told the Kronen Zeitung in 1994 about his studio.⁹⁹ Then came a break that affected him deeply. According to Heckel he suffered a first brain haemorrhage in 1989, from which he recovered well, and a second in 1994.¹⁰⁰ From 1994/95 he withdrew completely from life on tour and from public view; only rarely did he still appear on stage, for the last time in December 1997 at the INNtöne festival in Upper Austria. For a musician who lived from playing together in the moment, this farewell was deeply painful and tragic. The guitarist Peter Paul Skrepek records a sentence Pepl said „mit einem leisen Lächeln“ [“with a quiet smile”]: „Jetzt, wo ich alles spielen kann, was ich will, darf ich nicht mehr.“ [“Now that I can play everything I want, I’m no longer allowed to.”]¹⁰¹ Yet Pepl made the best of it for himself and remained highly productive to the end. First he turned to the piano, because on the guitar, as he said, he now had only „den analytischen Blick auf Technik und Fingersätze“ [“the analytical view of technique and fingerings”] and was „nicht mehr frei genug“ [“no longer free enough”].¹⁰² In 1998 he told the Wiener Zeitung, a Vienna daily: „Aber Musik ist mein Leben, und ich kann nicht nicht spielen, also beschloß ich, es mit einem anderen Instrument zu versuchen und bin aufs Klavierspielen gekommen, das mir ohnehin immer sehr viel Spaß gemacht hat.“ [“But music is my life, and I cannot not play, so I decided to try another instrument and came to the piano, which I had always enjoyed very much anyway.”]¹⁰³ This led to two piano albums: “Consequence”, freely improvised in November 1995 at the Bösendorfer factory in Vienna and not released until 2020, and “Flow”, recorded in a single take in the Brahms-Saal on 10 March 1996 and released on PAO Records (label of the trombonist and INNtöne festival founder Paul Zauner).¹⁰⁴ „Ich wollte, daß man auf der CD auch den Raum hört“ [“I wanted you to hear the room on the CD as well”], he told the magazine Concerto about “Flow”.¹⁰⁵ „Beim Klavierspielen genieße ich die große Freiheit“ [“When I play the piano I enjoy great freedom”], he wrote in 1995.¹⁰⁶

My main problem is my high blood pressure. Another contradiction: on the outside I may seem calm, but inside it races around in me like mad.

Pepl himself spoke often and openly about his very high blood pressure, not without self-irony. At home he would say that he could not „herunterkommen“ [come down] from it and that it ran around inside him „wie irre“ [like crazy].¹⁰⁸ He was a man of contrasts, and he knew it: „Ich bin ein Mensch der Gegensätze“ [“I am a man of contrasts”], he told Concerto in 1998, „oft sehr lustig oder ironisch und dann wieder sehr traurig. Wahrscheinlich hört man das auch in meinem Spiel“ [“often very funny or ironic and then very sad again. You can probably hear that in my playing too”].¹⁰⁷ Calm on the outside, with a deep, gentle voice, he was always live and under high voltage inside, and when it came to music he was very, very serious.¹⁰⁹ „Im äußerlich so introvertiert wirkenden Virtuosen brodelte es, wenn er spielte“ [“Inside the virtuoso, so introverted in appearance, things boiled over when he played”], wrote the Vienna daily Die Presse in its obituary.¹¹⁰ It was above all the guitar, to which he was so deeply attached, that drove his blood pressure up: „Musik bedeutet für mich Emotionen und Erinnerungen. Und sogar wenn ich etwas spiele, das mir nicht so gefällt, geht der Blutdruck rauf, weil es mir dann auf den Wecker geht“ [“For me music means emotions and memories. And even when I play something I don’t much like, my blood pressure goes up, because then it gets on my nerves”].¹⁰⁷ He told his son Daniel that he had the high blood pressure „wegen der Musik“ [“because of the music”]; at the piano and the drums, by contrast, he stayed calmer.¹¹¹ After playing at the INNtöne festival in Upper Austria in 1997 with Michel Portal, Franz Hackl, Wolfgang Reisinger and Toninho Horta, he quipped: „aber frage nicht, was nachher mit meinem Blutdruck war!“ [“but don’t ask what happened to my blood pressure afterwards!”]¹⁰⁷ And when he once went to a concert by the guitarist Alex Machacek, he enjoyed how the band drove forward very much in the spirit of Frank Zappa, but had to leave early because of his blood pressure.¹¹²

Pepl also rehearsed with guests in his home studio, in the early 1990s for example with the drummer Ronnie Burrage and the saxophonist John Purcell of Abstract Truth; on the wall hung the poster of his trio with Herbert Joos and Jon Christensen.¹¹³

In the studio he then found a logic all his own. It was there that what Pepl called “Harry Pepl's Lonely Single Swinger Band” came into being: a band in which he played all the instruments himself. He usually began with the drums, then added guitar, a bass sample via the MIDI guitar, piano and scat vocals, track by track, each part improvised in response to what was already there.¹¹⁴ Pepl himself drew the comparison with the Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi, who lived in seclusion in Rome and had works written down from improvisations he recorded on tape; Pepl called him „den in der Höhle Lebenden“ [“the one who lives in the cave”].¹¹⁵ He played, as he put it, „ohne irgendeinen Bezugspunkt eines Metronoms in einer gewissen time, einer Akkordfolge oder einer Melodie“ [“without any point of reference such as a metronome in a certain time, a chord progression or a melody”]. He explained the name by saying that „alle Stücke irgendwie Single sind und traurig, und swingen oder nicht swingen tuts auch“ [“all the pieces are somehow single and sad, and they swing, or they don't swing, as well”].¹¹⁶ Between 1995 and 2005 he recorded music there „kiloweise“ [“by the kilo”], as Daniel Pepl told the magazine Concerto, catalogued it and rated many pieces with three to five stars, from „so ok“ [“just OK”] to „leiwand“ [“brilliant”]; he burned a selection onto CDs such as the “Weihnachts-CD 1999”.¹¹⁷ Why these tracks, recorded alone, sound like a band improvising together is explored on the page The paradox of simultaneity.

In this work his two sons stood by him. The elder, the musicologist Georg Pepl, was from the early 1990s in effect the editor of the scores: he turned the notation generated on the computer into playable scores, as in the string quartet “Über Kurz oder Lang” for the Artis Quartet, and notated “Anspannen, Überspannen, Abspannen” and “Zeitraffer” for STUDIO PERCUSSION graz; he wrote the liner notes for “Flow”.¹¹⁸ The younger, Daniel Pepl, was living at home at the time, studying in Vienna and exploring music production himself. From 1995 and 1996 until his father's death he was closely involved: he assisted him as sound engineer with recording, mixing and mastering, which Harry Pepl then did himself, also during the period of the Lonely Single Swinger Band. In the booklet of “Flow” he is credited for editing together with the pianist Stephen Ferguson.¹¹⁹ Harry Pepl also often mixed and mastered his own compilations, such as “best-of” and Christmas CDs that he gave to friends and acquaintances.¹²⁰

In 2004 this music reached the stage for the first time: at the Blue Tomato, a jazz club, in Vienna and at the Salzburger Jazzherbst, Clemens Salesny, Wolfgang Schiftner and Lorenz Raab improvised to his recordings while the photographer Rainer Rygalyk showed pictures; Pepl was present. Rygalyk called Salzburg his last major public appearance.¹²¹ Harry Pepl died on 5 December 2005 in Wiener Neustadt, at the age of 60.¹²²

Der Standard wrote in its obituary that Pepl „gehörte in seiner aktiven Phase zu den bedeutendsten Gitarristen weltweit“ [“was, in his active phase, one of the most important guitarists in the world”]. For JazzEcho he was „einer der prägenden Instrumentalisten der europäischen Jazzszene“ [“one of the defining instrumentalists of the European jazz scene”], for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung „einer der anregendsten Stilisten auf dem akustischen wie dem elektrischen Instrument“ [“one of the most stimulating stylists on the acoustic as well as the electric instrument”]. Citing a report by the ORF, the neue musikzeitung counted him among the musicians „die den österreichischen Jazz national und international geprägt und beeinflußt haben“ [“who have shaped and influenced Austrian jazz nationally and internationally”]. Die Presse, a Vienna daily, wrote: „Im äußerlich so introvertiert wirkenden Virtuosen brodelte es, wenn er spielte.“ [“Within the virtuoso who seemed so introverted on the outside, something was seething when he played.”]¹²³

Legacy

His instruments also tell stories. Pepl's Gibson Les Paul (electric guitar by the US maker Gibson), a refinished 1954 Goldtop with P-90 pickups, previously belonged to Lou Reed (US rock musician, The Velvet Underground). According to family tradition, Reed was stranded in Vienna after a concert and sold the guitar at the Vienna music shop For Music (at the time one of Europe's major guitar shops, founded by Dietmar Lausegger, 1950 to 2011), where Harry Pepl bought it. According to Daniel Pepl, this was certainly before the Jazzzwio (from 1975), probably for his work in the ORF Big Band, which Pepl joined in 1971, so in the first half of the 1970s. The Goldtop still sounds today: Daniel Pepl lent it to the band Great Rift (Viennese heavy psych rock band) for the recording of their new record.¹²⁴

Bibl Rocks: “Is this a 50s Gibson LesPaul?”

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In the 1980s the Viennese string maker Thomastik-Infeld (manufacturer of strings for bowed and plucked instruments) advertised its guitar strings “Rock & Soul Strings” with Pepl. The advertisement calls him the “meteoric riser among European jazz guitarists”, and Pepl explains his choice:¹²⁵

I played Rock & Soul strings because they stay in tune, don’t oxidise, are easy to bend, and are soft and perfect in sound.

In September 2006 Nikolaus Kohler submitted the first academic study of Pepl at the University of Vienna, for which he had still been able to interview him in person.¹²⁶ In the same autumn the Graz promoter gamsbART, as part of the Austrian Soundcheck (festival in Graz), awarded the Harry Pepl Prize for young musicians for the first time, as a scholarship from the City of Graz worth 5,000 euros; later prizewinners include Clemens Salesny and Stefan Heckel. For Otmar Klammer, Pepl was „ein unverbesserlicher musikalischer Visionär“ [“an incorrigible musical visionary”], and the Kleine Zeitung ended its report with „Hut ab vor Harry P.!“ [“Hats off to Harry P.!”]¹²⁷ On 6 December 2006 musicians performed “A Tribute to Harry Pepl” at Porgy & Bess in Vienna, with the proceeds going to the administration of the estate.¹²⁸ In March 2007 Deutschlandfunk (Germany's national public radio station) devoted an episode of its series “Milestones”, on classics of jazz history, to him.¹²⁹

In 2007 Christian Muthspiel dedicated the album “Against the Wind” to the music of Pirchner and Pepl; Wolfgang Muthspiel had already named an album after “Air, Love & Vitamins” in 2004.¹³⁰ The piece is still played today: in 2025 the Munich-based vibraphonist Tim Collins and the pianist Martin Gasselsberger recorded it for their duo album “Songs From The Treehouse”.¹³¹ The Danish Kresten Osgood Quintet played Pepl's “The Halley's Comet Light Blue Blues” at the Copenhagen Jazz Festival in 2023; the album “Live At H15 Studio” was honoured as jazz release of the year at the Danish Music Awards Jazz (Danish jazz awards) 2024.¹³²

The estate is managed by his son Daniel Pepl, who produces the releases on Fullmax Recordings. To mark the tenth anniversary of his death, the double CD “Harry Pepl & Clemens Salesny / Martin Bayer / Peter Primus Frosch / Agnes Heginger” appeared in 2015, bringing Pepl's tracks from the home studio together with live-recorded instruments.¹³³ Since 2018 Clemens Salesny, Martin Bayer, Andi Schreiber and Valentin Duit have been playing on stage with Pepl's original tracks. „Jetzt wird es wieder live erlebbar. Ich denke, das ist in Europa einzigartig“ [“Now it can be experienced live again. I think that is unique in Europe”], says Daniel Pepl.¹³⁴ The album “Harry Pepl (tape) & The (Lonely) Single Swinger Band: Live” was released in 2025 to mark his 80th birthday and took second place at the Austrian Jazz Award 2025 (award for jazz from Austria) in the category best jazz album of the year (Projects).¹³⁵ After the concert at the Stockwerk in Graz in December 2025, the Kronen Zeitung wrote: „Aus Archivmaterial entstehen die Schemen eines Lebenden.“ [“From archive material emerge the shadowy outlines of a living man.”] The Kleine Zeitung heard „ein überraschend lebendiges, hochmusikalisches Ergebnis“ [“a surprisingly lively, highly musical result”].¹³⁶ Ö1 (the ORF's cultural radio channel) devoted a jazz night to him for each of his 70th and 80th birthdays.¹³⁷ In 2019 and 2020 Fullmax Recordings also released recordings from the estate and reissues, among them “Consequence” and “N.Y.C. Impressure”.¹³⁸ In 2024 Stefan Heckel completed his dissertation “Instant Composing” on Pepl's late work at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna.¹³⁹

Harry Pepl (tape) & The (Lonely) Single Swinger Band, short documentary

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A large part of the home-studio recordings has not yet been gone through. How the estate is being catalogued and who is given access is described on the Archive page; the individual milestones are listed in the Chronology. The newspaper articles, obituaries and programme booklets cited are listed in the Press archive.

The Harry Pepl Prize

Between 2006 and 2015 the Graz promoter gamsbART awarded the Harry Pepl Prize five times as part of the Austrian Soundcheck in Graz, Austria, initially as a scholarship from the City of Graz for musicians under 30.¹⁴⁰ Several of the winners have stayed close to Pepl's music: Schiftner and Salesny had already played live along to his recordings at the Salzburger Jazzherbst in 2004, Salesny now leads the live formation Harry Pepl (tape) & The (Lonely) Single Swinger Band, and in 2024 Heckel wrote his dissertation on Pepl's late work.

• 2006: Wolfgang Schiftner, saxophone¹⁴¹
• 2008: Daniel Riegler, trombone and composition¹⁴²
• 2010: Stefan Heckel, piano, accordion and composition¹⁴³
• 2013: Clemens Salesny, alto saxophone¹⁴⁴
• 2015: Viola Falb, saxophone and composition¹⁴⁵

No later presentation is documented.¹⁴⁶

Notes and sources (146)

1. Harry Pepl in conversation with Nikolaus Kohler, 2005, quoted in Kohler 2006, p. 150; former website harrypepl.com. ↩
2. Wochenpresse no. 49, 09.12.1988, p. 55 (Wolfgang Kralicek, “Saitensprünge”); neue musikzeitung, citing ORF, December 2005 (“Jazz-Gitarrist Harry Pepl gestorben”). Baptismal name Harald (Kleine Zeitung, 10.01.1988, p. 18, Otmar Klammer, “Feldzug mit der Gitarre”; Heckel 2024, p. 10). In its obituary of 08.12.2005 the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung gave 1944 as the year of birth instead. ↩
3. Daniel Pepl, notes for the digital release of “Consequence”, May 2020. ↩
4. Concerto 2/1998 (Martin Schuster, interview “Man könnte Klavierspielen müssen”); Musikergilde, 19.12.2005 (Peter Paul Skrepek, “Harry Pepl, ein Nachruf”); Kleine Zeitung, 10.01.1988, p. 18; Kohler 2006, pp. 22 and 24 f. ↩
5. Österreichische Mediathek and Technisches Museum Wien, online exhibition on the radio presenter and collector Günther Schifter, “Post-war period”. ↩
6. Kleine Zeitung, 10.01.1988, p. 18; former website harrypepl.com; Kohler 2006, p. 22 f. ↩
7. Kleine Zeitung, 10.01.1988, p. 18; Kohler 2006, p. 23. ↩
8. Kleine Zeitung, 10.01.1988, p. 18. Kohler 2006 (p. 23) gives his age as 15. ↩
9. Kleine Zeitung, 10.01.1988, p. 18; Musikergilde, 19.12.2005; former website harrypepl.com; Kohler 2006, p. 24 f.; Heckel 2024, pp. 66 and 69. ↩
10. Concerto 2/1998; Die Presse, December 2005, p. 34 (“Er musste spielen”). ↩
11. Musikergilde, 19.12.2005; Die Presse, December 2005, p. 34, and the Kleine Zeitung, 10.01.1988, p. 18, additionally mention the conservatory and the music academy in Vienna; the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 08.12.2005, p. 39, mentions the music academy. On the entrance examination: Kohler 2006, p. 24. ↩
12. Photo from the musical estate, around 1960/61; names according to the family (Daniel Pepl, 17 October 2026). ↩
13. Kleine Zeitung, 10.01.1988, p. 18; singles “Susi-Twist / Tabu” (Rex Roval 35-6080, 1962, Discogs) and “Skinny Minny / Olymp” (Rex Roval 35-6105, 1964); Kohler 2006, p. 26 f. ↩
14. Membership card of the Austrian Trade Union Federation, Gewerkschaft Kunst und freie Berufe, musicians' section, joined 1 January 1967 (estate); Peter Paul Skrepek called it “a document of its time” on Facebook. ↩
15. Kleine Zeitung, 10.01.1988, p. 18; Kohler 2006, p. 27. ↩
16. Kurier, 03.11.1998, p. 10; Musikergilde, 19.12.2005 (Peter Paul Skrepek encountered him in 1974 as the first guitarist of the ORF Big Band); Kohler 2006, p. 28. ↩
17. Information from Daniel Pepl, 17 October 2026, based on a broadcast on ORF III (Pepl from about minute 4); the title and first broadcast date of the programme are still being researched. ↩
18. Wochenpresse no. 49, 09.12.1988, p. 55. ↩
19. Der Standard, 06.12.2005, p. 25 (Ljubiša Tošić, obituary), and Die Presse, December 2005, p. 34 (Erich Kleinschuster); former website harrypepl.com (Harald Neuwirth); Kohler 2006, pp. 29 to 35. ↩
20. Kohler 2006, p. 30. The obituaries in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Die Presse also mention Lee Konitz. ↩
21. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 08.12.2005, p. 39; neue musikzeitung, citing ORF, December 2005. ↩
22. JazzEcho, 07.12.2005 (“Ade Harry Pepl!”); Kohler 2006, pp. 35 f. and 70 f. The sources date the beginning of the duo differently: Kohler 1975/76, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and JazzEcho 1977. ↩
23. Quoted in Jazz thing, 08.12.2005 (“Gestorben: Harry Pepl”). ↩
24. Der Standard, 06.12.2005, p. 25. ↩
25. Liner notes to the LP “Runo Ericksson's Omnibus” (Four Leaf Records), quoted in Kohler 2006, p. 49. ↩
26. Back cover of the LP “Gegenwind” (Mood Records, Stuttgart, order no. 23999); Kohler 2006, pp. 70 f. and 74. The sources give 1979 and 1980 as the year of release. ↩
27. Wochenpresse no. 49, 09.12.1988, p. 54 f.; Kohler 2006, pp. 76 to 78. Date and venue according to the database of the Montreux Jazz Festival. ↩
28. Concerto 2/2009, p. 44 (Thomas Hein, “Jazzzwio, ein markanter Name, bis heute”); Kurier, 18.01.2009, p. 38; Kronen Zeitung, 20.03.2009, p. 36. ↩
29. LP “Austria Drei” (EGO Records, 1979); Kohler 2006, pp. 41 to 44. ↩
30. JazzEcho, 07.12.2005 (Vienna Art Orchestra); Kohler 2006, pp. 45 to 50 and 63 to 70. ↩
31. Kohler 2006, pp. 78 to 82. ↩
32. Jazzlive no. 1, July 1983, p. 7 (“Erster Blick über die Mauer”), quoted in Kohler 2006, p. 82. ↩
33. Kohler 2006, p. 79 (quarterly list). The programme booklet of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien of 06.05.1993 and the Kurier, 03.11.1998, p. 10, speak of two German Record Critics' Awards. ↩
34. New York Times, 18.05.1985 (according to Zlabinger 2013); LP “Naissus Jazz 85” (Diskos, 1986); Kohler 2006, pp. 85 to 90; Heckel 2024, p. 84. ↩
35. Jack DeJohnette, written statement for Ö1 on Harry Pepl's 75th birthday, requested by Daniel Pepl through his management, e-mail of 14 September 2020 (archive of Daniel Pepl); Ö1, “Der unvergessene Jazzgitarrist Harry Pepl”, 25.09.2020. ↩
36. Der Standard, 06.12.2005, p. 25; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 08.12.2005, p. 39; Concerto 2/1998; Kohler 2006, pp. 50 to 54; information from the estate. ↩
37. Information from the estate (René Kollo Show); Die Steirische, 08.09.1988, p. 12 (Heimo Steps, “Vitaler Klangmaler”); YouTube, “Benny Goodman At The Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen Denmark 1981” (channel 1964Mbrooks); Porgy & Bess, programme text for “A Tribute to Harry Pepl”, 06.12.2006; Kohler 2006, pp. 55 to 60. The programme text dates the Copenhagen concert to 1980. ↩
38. Kohler 2006, pp. 61 to 63. ↩
39. Photograph with handwritten dedication in the estate; Kohler 2006, p. 62 f. ↩
40. Kohler 2006, p. 90. ↩
41. JazzEcho, 07.12.2005; Kohler 2006, pp. 90 f. and 94. ↩
42. Kohler 2006, p. 95; Heckel 2024, p. 219. ↩
43. Jazzzeitung 2006, p. 6 (Rainer Rygalyk, “Ciao Habanero”). ↩
44. Kohler 2006, p. 98 f. ↩
45. Information sheet “Infos Harry PEPL” (around 1996), p. 2 f.; Kohler 2006, pp. 103 to 111. ↩
46. Quoted in the Kleine Zeitung, 10.01.1988, p. 18, in Die Steirische, 08.09.1988, p. 12, in the programme booklets of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien of 27.02.1990 and 06.05.1993 and in the Kurier, 03.11.1998, p. 10. The original article was kept in the archive of gamsbART (Graz) under the aegis of Heimo Steps. ↩
47. Wochenpresse no. 49, 09.12.1988, p. 54 f.; Kohler 2006, pp. 101 f. Kohler gives 1988 as the year of release, Heckel 2024 (p. 191) 1987. ↩
48. Wochenpresse no. 49, 09.12.1988, p. 54 f.; Heckel 2024, pp. 90 to 92; Kohler 2006, p. 113. ↩
49. Die Steirische, 08.09.1988, p. 12; Heckel 2024, p. 91; Kohler 2006, pp. 113 f. ↩
50. ECM Records, press release for “Cracked Mirrors” (1988), p. 1; press digest for “Cracked Mirrors” (1988), likewise quoted in the programme booklet of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien of 16.03.1989. ↩
51. Robert Urman, “Glanzvolle Dreieinigkeit”, daily newspaper (title not preserved), 22.04.1988. ↩
52. Wochenpresse no. 49, 09.12.1988, p. 55; Stuttgarter Zeitung, 15.12.1988 (“Jazz im Zauberspiegel”); Eßlinger Zeitung, 17.12.1988 (Christa Wörner, “Perkussives”); Heckel 2024, p. 95. ↩
53. Wochenpresse no. 49, 09.12.1988, p. 54 (subtitle). ↩
54. Ralf Dombrowski, obituary “Verstummte Saiten”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 07.12.2005, p. 17; translated from the German. ↩
55. Daniel Pepl, oral communication, 15.10.2026. ↩
56. Kohler 2006, p. 87 (interview 1-38); Thomas Palme, memory posted on Facebook for Pepl's 81st birthday, 10.09.2026 (“came specially to hear Harry Pepl”). ↩
57. Daniel Pepl, oral communication, 16.10.2026. ↩
58. Thomas Palme (Viennese jazz and blues guitarist), memory posted on Facebook for Pepl's 81st birthday, 10.09.2026; the year (1980s or early 1990s) is not recorded. ↩
59. Kleine Zeitung, 10.01.1988, p. 18; Die Steirische, 08.09.1988, p. 12 (Scofield, quoted by Heimo Steps); Porgy & Bess, programme text, 06.12.2006; Kohler 2006, p. 87, and Heckel 2024, pp. 58 to 60 (Metheny, Frisell). ↩
60. Programme booklet of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, 27.02.1990; Heckel 2024, pp. 61 to 63. ↩
61. Harry Pepl in: Bernhard Günther (ed.), Lexikon zeitgenössischer Musik aus Österreich, Vienna: music information center austria 1997, p. 824 f.; mica, Harry Pepl; Kohler 2006, p. 135. ↩
62. Programme booklets of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, 16.03.1989 and 27.02.1990; Heckel 2024, p. 215 f. ↩
63. Programme booklet of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, 27.02.1990; Heckel 2024, p. 87. ↩
64. Information sheet “Infos Harry PEPL” (around 1996), p. 3; Kohler 2006, p. 120. ↩
65. Information sheet “Infos Harry PEPL” (around 1996), p. 3; Der Standard, 06.12.2005, p. 25; Heckel 2024, pp. 80, 87 f. and 228 f. The former website and Heimo Steps (GamsbART-Post 5/2006) give 1990. ↩
66. Neue Kronen-Zeitung, 28.07.1994, p. 22 (Bernd Schmidt, “Rastloser Grenzgänger”); Kohler 2006, p. 120; Heckel 2024, pp. 137 to 149. ↩
67. Programme booklet of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, 06.05.1993; Kurier, 09.05.1993, p. 22 (Werner Schuster); quotation from Pepl: Kohler 2006, p. 122. ↩
68. Heckel 2024, pp. 112 and 245 f. (interview with Richard Österreicher Jr., 14 December 2020); the quotation is translated from the German. ↩
69. Tschin Bumm, February 1990, p. 52 (“Harry Pepl im Studio: Das Bösendorfer-Projekt”); Heckel 2024, pp. 103 to 113 and 119; Kohler 2006, pp. 115 to 119. ↩
70. Andreas Felber, “Harry Pepl. Die Überzeitlichkeit des Augenblicks”, liner notes to the CD edition 2004, quoted in Heckel 2024, p. 119. ↩
71. Letter from the Knitting Factory (Michael Dorf) of 02.04.1992; Jazzlive no. 99/1992, p. 8 (Hannes Schweiger, “Soundknitting”); Kohler 2006, p. 124 f. ↩
72. Salzburger Nachrichten, May 1994 (short review); Salzburger Nachrichten, 24.12.1994, p. 7 (Wolfgang Lamprecht); Der Standard, 27.05.1994 (Ljubiša Tošić, “Der Groove-Professor gibt sich recht unberechenbar”); Neue Kronen-Zeitung, 28.07.1994, p. 22. ↩
73. Kulturpreis des Landes Niederösterreich (Culture Prize of the State of Lower Austria): 1991 Anerkennungspreis (recognition prize), 1998 Würdigungspreis (prize of honour) for music (the state's database of prizewinners); Kurier, 03.11.1998, p. 10. ↩
74. Kurier, 03.11.1998, p. 10 (“Auszeichnung für den musikalischen Jazz-Grenzgänger Harry Pepl”). ↩
75. Bundeskanzleramt (ed.), Kunstbericht 1996, III-130 der Beilagen XX. GP (received by the Nationalrat on 22.04.1998), p. 140, Abteilung III/2 Musik und darstellende Kunst, “Andere Einzelförderungen”: “Pepl Harry, Kompositionsförderung 60.000”; Parliament, PDF. ↩
76. Bundeskanzleramt, Kunstsektion (ed.), Kunstberichte, section “Abteilungen, Beiräte und Jurys”: Kunstbericht 1999, p. 106 (“Jury Förderungspreis für Musik (Sparte Orchesterwerke)”, “Harry Pepl (ab Herbst 1999)”); Kunstbericht 2000, p. 100 (“Jury Staatsstipendien für Komponistinnen und Komponisten”); Kunstbericht 2001, p. 95 (“Jury Kompositionsförderungen (2. Jahreshälfte 2001)”). ↩
77. Kohler 2006, p. 29; Heckel 2024, p. 69. ↩
78. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 08.12.2005, p. 39; JazzEcho, 07.12.2005; neue musikzeitung, citing ORF, December 2005 (full professor from 1984 to 1995). ↩
79. Sammlung Essl, programme “Einkreisung”, Schömer-Haus Klosterneuburg, 1 April 2000, short biography of Harry Pepl; Free Jazz Saar, festival 2021 (Andreas Willers). ↩
80. Michael Kahr: “Jazz in Graz von 1965 bis heute. Geschichte und Identität einer Jazz(haupt)stadt”, pp. 440 and 447. ↩
81. Kleine Zeitung, 10.01.1988, p. 18 (standfirst). ↩
82. Kohler 2006, p. 139. ↩
83. Kurier, 03.11.1998, p. 10. ↩
84. Heckel 2024, p. 230 f. ↩
85. Steirerkrone, 20.05.1982 (Ronnie Herbolzheimer, “Star mit Witz: Larry Coryell”). ↩
86. Musikergilde, 19.12.2005; JazzEcho, 07.12.2005; Passauer Neue Presse, 27.10.2017, p. 21; Heckel 2024, pp. 65, 80 and 244. ↩
87. Wolfgang Muthspiel in conversation with Klaus Taschwer, “Leiwand oder ned leiwand”, Falter, 24.07.2002, p. 55; translated from the German. ↩
88. Martin Schaberl, “Wolfgang Muthspiel – einer der vielseitigsten Musiker Österreichs und Preisträger des European Jazz Prize 2003”, master’s thesis (Magisterarbeit), University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, 2004, pp. 13 and 221 (e-mail answer by Jojo Mayer, autumn 2003); translated from the German. ↩
89. George Varga, interview with Wolfgang Muthspiel, The San Diego Union-Tribune, 28.01.2022. ↩
90. Daniel Pepl, Facebook post of 11.09.2017 (first student, aged 14) and oral communication, 15.10.2026; Andy Manndorff in an interview with mica, quoted in the APA obituary, Salzburger Nachrichten, 11.09.2017. ↩
91. Wiener Meisterkurse (European Music Institute Vienna), Faculty since 1975; the year of his course is not documented. ↩
92. JazzEcho, 07.12.2005. ↩
93. neue musikzeitung, citing ORF, December 2005; Musikergilde, 19.12.2005. ↩
94. GamsbART-Post 5/2006; Die Steirische, 08.09.1988, p. 12. ↩
95. Interview in Vienna on 2 September 2003, in: Martin Schaberl, master’s thesis, University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, 2004, p. 165. ↩
96. Michael Kahr, “Jazz in Graz von 1965 bis heute” (guest lecturers Wayne Brasel, Guido Jeszenszky, Karl Ratzer and Christian Röver until 2003, professorship to Jeszenszky in 2004); Ratzer's teaching from 1999 to 2003 according to Wikipedia; photo from the estate with a 2001 date stamp, according to the family from the time when Ratzer applied for the professorship. ↩
97. Kurier, 03.11.1998, p. 10. ↩
98. Concerto 2/2009, p. 44; Kohler 2006, pp. 1 and 67; Heckel 2024, p. 154; „Ich geh jetzt ins Bergwerk“: Daniel Pepl, 18 October 2026. ↩
99. Neue Kronen-Zeitung, 28.07.1994, p. 22. ↩
100. With acquaintances Pepl always spoke of a „Hirnblutung“ (brain haemorrhage) (Heckel 2024, p. 72), and in the 1998 Concerto interview he spoke of his „zweite Gehirnblutung“ (second brain haemorrhage). Heckel 2024, pp. 72 to 76 (section on his health, authorised by the family) and pp. 151 f.; Kohler 2006, pp. 128 f. and 147; Christian Rösner, “Echtzeitkompositionen”, Wiener Zeitung, 10 February 1998, p. 4; last concert: INNtöne, Zell an der Pram Castle, 5 and 6 December 1997 (OÖ Nachrichten, 9 December 1997), information from Daniel Pepl, 15 October 2026; the withdrawal from 1994/95: Daniel Pepl in Concerto 2/2009, p. 44, and on Ö1, Spielräume Spezial, 25 September 2020; what it meant to him: according to the family (Daniel Pepl, 17 October 2026). ↩
101. Peter Paul Skrepek, “Harry Pepl, ein Nachruf”, Musikergilde, 19 December 2005. ↩
102. Martin Schuster, “Man könnte Klavierspielen müssen”, Concerto 2/1998, p. 44, quoted in Kohler 2006, p. 129; Heckel 2024, p. 151. ↩
103. Christian Rösner, “Echtzeitkompositionen”, Wiener Zeitung, Tuesday 10 February 1998, p. 4; translated from the German. ↩
104. Kohler 2006, pp. 128 to 133; Heckel 2024, p. 152. ↩
105. Concerto 2/1998. ↩
106. Booklet of “Consequence” (1995), quoted in Kohler 2006, p. 129. ↩
107. Martin Schuster, “Man könnte Klavierspielen müssen” [“One might have to play the piano”], interview, Concerto 2/1998 (online version, Internet Archive); the blood-pressure quote is also cited by Michael Tschida, Kleine Zeitung, 6 December 2005, p. 55, the “Wecker” quote by Kohler 2006, p. 129, and Heckel 2024, p. 151; translated from the German. ↩
108. According to the family (Daniel Pepl, 17 October 2026). ↩
109. Martin Schuster’s introduction, Concerto 2/1998 (“speaks with a deep, gentle voice … giggles at a bon mot, only to turn serious again the next moment”); “under current and high voltage” and “very, very serious”: according to the family (Daniel Pepl, 17 October 2026); translated from the German. ↩
110. “Er musste spielen” [“He had to play”], obituary, Die Presse, 7 December 2005, p. 34; translated from the German. ↩
111. Heckel 2024, p. 75 (recollection of Daniel Pepl). ↩
112. According to the family (Daniel Pepl, 16 October 2026). ↩
113. Photos from the estate; Daniel Pepl on Facebook, 23 August 2020 (“Early 90ies”); Kohler 2006, pp. 125 to 127 (rehearsals with Abstract Truth in Hernstein around May 1993). ↩
114. Heckel 2024, pp. 154 and 259 f.; Kohler 2006, p. 133. ↩
115. Heckel 2024, pp. 51 f. (according to Georg Pepl and Daniel Pepl); that Pepl drew the comparison himself: according to the family (Daniel Pepl, 17 October 2026). ↩
116. Kohler 2006, p. 133. ↩
117. Concerto 2/2009, p. 44; Heckel 2024, pp. 154 and 158 f. ↩
118. Heckel 2024, pp. 121 to 136 (editing of “Über Kurz oder Lang”), p. 207 (“Zeitraffer” notated entirely by hand) and pp. 234 f. (interview with Georg Pepl, 25 August 2015: editor of the score, “Notator” of “Anspannen, Überspannen, Abspannen” and “Zeitraffer”); booklet “Flow”, PAO Records 1996 (text by Georg Pepl); according to the family (Daniel Pepl, 16 and 17 October 2026). ↩
119. Booklet “Flow”, PAO Records 1996 (“Edited by Daniel Pepl, Stephen Ferguson”; “Inner Photos: Daniel Pepl”); Heckel 2024, p. 166 (Daniel Pepl recalls his father's mastering in 1999); sound engineering: Daniel Pepl in Concerto 2/2009, p. 44; from 1995/1996: according to the family (Daniel Pepl, 17 October 2026). ↩
120. According to the family (Daniel Pepl, 17.10.2026). ↩
121. Jazzzeitung 2006, p. 6; Heckel 2024, pp. 154 to 156. ↩
122. Musikergilde, 19.12.2005; Der Standard, 06.12.2005, p. 25; Die Presse, December 2005, p. 34. ↩
123. Der Standard, 06.12.2005, p. 25; JazzEcho, 07.12.2005; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 08.12.2005, p. 39 (“Schnelle Finger”); neue musikzeitung, citing ORF, December 2005; Die Presse, December 2005, p. 34. ↩
124. Bibl Rocks, YouTube, 17.09.2021, with the channel's comments; post by the band Great Rift on Facebook; Daniel Pepl, oral communication, 16 and 17 October 2026 (purchase before the Jazzzwio, ORF Big Band as his assumption). For Music and Dietmar Lausegger (1950 to 2011, died in the night to 10 February 2011): Andrea Maria Dusl, obituary, Falter 8/2011, 23 February 2011 (calling Lou Reed „ein Haberer“ [“a regular pal”] of the shop); no founding year is documented. A Vienna concert by Reed from the first half of the 1970s is not yet documented. Lou Reed in Vienna: festival “Star's 75”, Wiener Stadthalle, announced for Friday, 29 August 1975, cancelled (Lou Reed Gigography 1975, The Velvet Forum); Wiener Konzerthaus, Wednesday, 20 April 1977, according to the itinerary also 21 April 1977 (Lou Reed Gigography 1977, The Velvet Forum; setlist.fm); recollections of the promoter Edek Bartz on the cancelled Stadthalle show and the sold-out Konzerthaus concert: profil, 2013. For 1972 to 1974, 1976, 1978 and 1979 the gigography lists no appearance in Austria; The Velvet Underground did not perform in Europe in the 1960s. ↩
125. Advertisement by Thomastik-Infeld, Vienna, 1980s (leaflet from the estate); Daniel Pepl, Facebook, 15.01.2021. ↩
126. Kohler 2006, foreword. ↩
127. GamsbART-Post 5/2006 (Otmar Klammer, “Harry Pepl: Wege & Visionen”); Kleine Zeitung online, 17.11.2006 (Michael Tschida, “Harry Pepl: Œuvre eines Kreativen”); mica music austria. ↩
128. Porgy & Bess, programme text for 06.12.2006. ↩
129. Deutschlandfunk, Nachtradio, “Milestones: Harry Pepl”, 13.03.2007. ↩
130. Thomas Zlabinger, Free from Jazz, dissertation, CUNY 2013; former website harrypepl.com. ↩
131. GLM Fine Music, “Songs From The Treehouse” (FM 434), 2025: track 7 “Air, Love & Vitamines”. ↩
132. Kresten Osgood, “Live At H15 Studio” (ILK, 2024), Bandcamp; JazzDanmark, Danish Music Awards Jazz 2024, Store VEGA, Copenhagen, 10.12.2024. ↩
133. Heckel 2024, pp. 156 and 163 to 170. ↩
134. Press text by Fullmax Recordings for the album “Live” (2025), p. 1; Heckel 2024, pp. 168 to 170. ↩
135. ORF Kärnten, November 2025; Ö1, “On stage Spezial”, 26.11.2025; fullmax.at, 26.11.2025. ↩
136. Kronen Zeitung, 18.12.2025, p. 42 (F. Jureček, “Die Schemen eines Lebenden”); Kleine Zeitung, 18.12.2025, p. 51 (Robert Tendl, “Im Spiel mit der Wiener Gitarristenlegende”). ↩
137. Ö1, “Die Ö1 Jazznacht”, 19.09.2015 and 06.09.2025 (Christian Bakonyi). ↩
138. Fullmax Recordings catalogue. ↩
139. Heckel 2024, pp. 1 and 203. ↩
140. GamsbART-Post 5/2006; Kleine Zeitung online, 17.11.2006; Ö1, “Schon gehört?”, 21.11.2013 (programme page). ↩
141. mica music austria, music database: Wolfgang Schiftner. ↩
142. University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, gazette no. 5, 03.12.2008: awarded on 17 November 2008, a scholarship of 4,000 euros that called for a study of Pepl's work, whose results were to be presented in 2009; Daniel Riegler's website, biography; mica music austria, 17.09.2010; Kleine Zeitung, 16.11.2008, p. 109. ↩
143. mica music austria, music database: Stefan Heckel. ↩
144. Ö1, “Schon gehört?”, 21.11.2013; mica music austria, 25.11.2013. ↩
145. Falter 47/2015, 18.11.2015; NÖN, 24.12.2015. Falb's biography, mica and Wikipedia give 2016. ↩
146. In his dissertation Stefan Heckel dates the series up to 2015 (Heckel 2024, p. 71). ↩