Monday, 19 October 2026

“Another planet”: Wolfgang Muthspiel on his teacher Harry Pepl

A 2004 thesis on Wolfgang Muthspiel documents how formative Harry Pepl was for him, with voices from Muthspiel and Jojo Mayer and a photo from 1992.

Harry Pepl sits on a chair with his guitar, behind him a rack of effects units and an amplifier, in front of him an effects board on the carpet; on the left in the foreground, partly cut off, another person. Teaching at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG), Austria (information from Daniel Pepl, 19 October 2026). The photo appeared in Martin Schaberl’s master’s thesis on Wolfgang Muthspiel (KUG, 2004, p. 165). — Harry Pepl teaching, August 1992Photo: Martin Schaberl

In 2004 Martin Schaberl wrote his master’s thesis at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG), Austria, on the Austrian jazz guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel, winner of the European Jazz Prize 2003. It records that at the Graz jazz department Muthspiel studied jazz guitar only with Harry Pepl. In an interview in Vienna on 2 September 2003, Muthspiel called his teacher “the authority on time” and drew a comparison: “I love the way Pat Metheny handles time. I think it swings completely. […] But what Harry Pepl ‘pulls off’ is another planet.”

In the same thesis the Swiss drummer Jojo Mayer, who recorded the album “N.Y.C. Impressure” with Pepl in New York, USA, in 1992, calls Pepl Muthspiel’s “early teacher and mentor” and adds in brackets that Pepl was “together with Django Reinhardt probably the best jazz guitarist Europe has produced”. Martin Schaberl’s photo shows Pepl teaching in August 1992. The quotations are translated from the German.

More on the Life page and among the voices on Wolfgang Muthspiel’s page.