Cover: Amadeo / PAO Records
Recordings during his lifetime · 1994
Beginnings
Abstract Truth
Album by the band Abstract Truth around the trombonist Paul Zauner, with John Purcell, Kenny Davis, Ronnie Burrage and Harry Pepl, recorded in New York; eight tracks, three of them by Pepl. Pepl’s last release as a guitarist during his lifetime.
- Year
- 1994
- Label
- Amadeo / PAO Records
- Catalogue number
- 523 570-2
- Formats
- CD
- Harry Pepl
- co-leader
- Project
- Abstract Truth
- Recording
- probably autumn 1992, New York City
- Archive ID
- HP-T-0051
Tracks
- 1 Alison Composition by John Purcell 6:22
- 2 Die kleine Mutti Composition by Harry Pepl 5:26
- 3 Beginnings Composition by John Purcell 5:01
- 4 Strange Uhudler Composition by Harry Pepl; duo of Paul Zauner and Harry Pepl (guitar synthesiser) 5:05
- 5 Song for Gil Composition by Harry Pepl 8:00
- 6 Time Out Composition by Kenny Davis 5:15
- 7 A/C Interspective Composition by Ronnie Burrage 6:48
- 8 Down Home Composition by Paul Zauner 4:51
For each of the eight tracks the booklet names the composer, the collecting society and the line-up. Pepl plays on every track, on “Strange Uhudler” in a duo with Paul Zauner, on guitar synthesiser; Zauner also plays on “Song for Gil” and on his own “Down Home”. John Purcell plays tenor saxophone, flute and saxophone on “A/C Interspective” and saxello on “Down Home”; Ronnie Burrage also plays synthesiser on “A/C Interspective”, Kenny Davis plays bass. On the title track all four snap their fingers.
Colette Oswald’s band photo was taken on the Bow Bridge in Central Park, New York (USA). On Friday, 13 November 1992, Der Standard, a Vienna daily, reported that “a few weeks ago” Zauner had recorded “two albums” in New York with a new band “featuring, among others, the Austrians Harry Pepl and Harry Sokal”; Harry Sokal appears in the booklet’s thank-you list.1 The booklet gives no recording date. Since it remembers George Adams (died Saturday, 14 November 1992) and Carter Jefferson (died Thursday, 9 December 1993), it was completed at the end of 1993 at the earliest. Discogs dates the recording to 1993, Kohler to 1994.2
The booklet carries the motto “Love, peace and power to the people”, a cover painting by Margit Taus and design by Andreas Ortag. Thanks go, among others, to the cultural department of the state of Upper Austria, the Austrian Ministry of Education, the Foreign Ministry and the American Music Project, and to musicians such as George Lewis, Billy Kilson, Klaus Dickbauer and Harry Sokal. According to the booklet, Pepl played “PRS guitars and Tomastik strings”, that is, strings by the Vienna maker Thomastik-Infeld.2
In December 1994 the Salzburger Nachrichten, a Salzburg daily, counted “Paul Zauner’s ‘Abstract Truth’” among Amadeo’s “all of them great albums”.3 The Kronen Zeitung, Austria’s largest-circulation daily, reviewed the CD on Sunday, 5 November 1995, as a new release from PAO Records (Taufkirchen an der Pram, Upper Austria, Austria): “In the two-part melody group, guitarist Harry Pepl is the defining creative force.”4
Notes and sources (4)
- Johann Skocek, “Bauernbub spielt im Sweet Basil”, Der Standard, Friday, 13 November 1992 (APA full text, archived locally). ↩
- CD booklet “Beginnings”, Amadeo 523 570-2; Kohler 2006, pp. 125 to 127; Discogs, release 3884833. ↩
- Wolfgang Lamprecht, “Österreichs Jazz hält seine Freunde auf Trab”, Salzburger Nachrichten, Saturday, 24 December 1994, p. 7. ↩
- Kronen Zeitung, Sunday, 5 November 1995, p. 26 (initials CT). ↩
Listen and watch
Abstract Truth: Die kleine Mutti (Beginnings, 1994)
“Die kleine Mutti” (Harry Pepl), track 2 of the album “Beginnings” by Abstract Truth (PAO Records, 1994), 5:26: Harry Pepl (guitar), John Purcell (tenor saxophone), Kenny Davis (bass), Ronnie Burrage (drums). Prepared in 2020 for the Ö1 radio programme.
account required For registered users (research, press, teaching): Sign in
