Monday, 19 October 2026
In the archive of French broadcasting: concerts with Harry Pepl from 1983 to 1987
The catalogue of the INA lists concert recordings and broadcasts by Radio France and FR3 with Harry Pepl, with Michel Portal, Daniel Humair, Dave Holland, Air Mail and the quintet of Enrico Rava and Dino Saluzzi. Five concerts were previously unknown.
The INA (Institut national de l'audiovisuel), the archive of French radio and television, pointed Daniel Pepl to its catalogue records in reply to his enquiry. Under the name Harry Pepl the public catalogue lists 14 records. Ten of them are concert recordings and broadcasts by Radio France and FR3 from 1983 to 1987 in which Pepl himself plays; two more show that his music was on air on France Musique in 2007 and 2008.
Five concerts were previously unknown: on 30 May 1983 “Daniel Humair and Friends” at the Théâtre de l'Atelier in Paris, with Dave Holland, Joachim Kühn and Werner Pirchner, the Austrian composer and vibraphonist, on 10 June 1984 Michel Portal Plus at the jazz festival in Angoulême, on 27 October 1984 the group Tenor Madness at the Festival de Jazz de Paris, on 10 March 1986 the Michel Portal Unit with Jack DeJohnette and on 3 November 1986 the quintet of Enrico Rava and Dino Saluzzi in Paris.
They are joined by a recording of Air Mail from May 1986, a programme by the television channel FR3 with Air Mail in Amiens and the complete radio recording of the Amiens concert of 1987 from which the album “Men's Land” comes. It includes Pepl’s “Comète”, according to Daniel Pepl “Halley's Comet Light Blue Blues”, which is not on the record. In November 2007 the trio of Jean-Paul Celea, François Couturier and Daniel Humair played Pepl’s “Tintenfisch Inki” live on France Musique.
The recordings can only be heard for research purposes on site at the INAthèque’s consultation centres; the INA does not provide copies. All records are in the Press archive with a link to the catalogue, the concerts in the Chronology, and the way to access them under For research.
Two pieces of evidence for 1981 come from Germany: the archive of the Donaueschingen Music Days lists Pepl on 17 October 1981 with the Vienna Art Orchestra in the SWF Jazz Session, and for the Jazzzwio at the Metropol in Berlin on 6 November 1981 there are now the announcement in the Hamburg music magazine Sounds and the set list from the Rockpalast archive, a fan archive on the WDR television programme Rockpalast.