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Material for your reporting on Harry Pepl: short biographies ready to use, documented key facts, press photos with credits and the contact for the estate.
Harry Pepl (1945 to 2005) was an Austrian jazz guitarist, composer and professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. He played in Jazzzwio with the Austrian composer and vibraphonist Werner Pirchner, with Benny Goodman, Jack DeJohnette and Michel Portal, and in the band Air Mail. With Real-time Composing he turned improvisations into compositions. From 1977 until the mid-1990s he taught in Graz.
Harry Pepl (1945 to 2005) was an Austrian jazz guitarist, composer and professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. Born in Vienna, he taught himself jazz from records and in the 1970s was a session musician and guitarist with the ORF Big Band (ORF: Austria's public broadcaster). With the vibraphonist Werner Pirchner he formed Jazzzwio, which played the Montreux Jazz Festival (renowned jazz festival in Switzerland) in 1981. He was guitarist with Benny Goodman, recorded for ECM (the renowned European jazz label) with Jack DeJohnette and with Herbert Joos and Jon Christensen (“Cracked Mirrors”, 1988), and played with Wolfgang Puschnig in the band Air Mail and, in France, with Michel Portal. Using MIDI guitar and computer, he developed Real-time Composing, in which improvised voices become scores; this is how he wrote for the internationally renowned Kronos Quartet and the Artis-Quartett. From 1977 he taught at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, from 1984 as professor. After two brain haemorrhages he withdrew from the stage in the mid-1990s and from then on worked, highly productively, in his own studio in Hernstein, Lower Austria. Since 2015 releases from his estate have appeared on the Vienna label Fullmax Recordings.
Harry Pepl was born in Vienna on 10 September 1945 and died in Wiener Neustadt on 5 December 2005. He started out on the accordion, took up the guitar at 15 and taught himself jazz by copying recordings by Wes Montgomery, Jim Hall and others note for note. After years with the dance band Austrian Evergreens, he became a session musician and guitarist with the ORF Big Band (ORF: Austria's public broadcaster) in the 1970s.
From the mid-1970s he and the Tyrolean vibraphonist Werner Pirchner formed the duo Jazzzwio. The duo recorded “Gegenwind” in 1979, played the Montreux Jazz Festival (renowned jazz festival in Switzerland) in 1981 and in 1982 expanded into a trio with Jack DeJohnette for an ECM (the renowned European jazz label) album; it featured Pepl's composition “Air, Love & Vitamins”, which many musicians still play today. In 1980 and 1981 Pepl was the guitarist in Benny Goodman's quartet. He played with Wolfgang Puschnig, Mike Richmond and Wolfgang Reisinger in the band Air Mail, in France with Michel Portal, Dave Liebman and Jack DeJohnette, and recorded “Volver” with Enrico Rava and Dino Saluzzi. His ECM album “Cracked Mirrors” with Herbert Joos and Jon Christensen received the German Record Critics' Award (Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik) in 1988.
Pepl was one of the first jazz musicians anywhere to work with MIDI guitar and computer. From this he developed Real-time Composing or Instant Composing: he improvised voice by voice, had the result printed out as a score and corrected nothing afterwards. This produced commissioned works for Ensemble Wien, Ensemble Kontrapunkte, the internationally renowned Kronos Quartet, STUDIO PERCUSSION graz and the Artis-Quartett, as well as the album “Schönberg Improvations” (1990) with a Bösendorfer (Vienna piano maker) computer grand piano.
From 1977 he taught jazz guitar at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, and from 1984 as full professor; his students included Wolfgang Muthspiel. The province of Lower Austria honoured him with its annual culture prizes for music in 1991 and 1998.
After two brain haemorrhages, in 1989 and 1994, Pepl withdrew completely from life on tour and from public view from 1994/95, a heavy blow for him. Yet he made the best of it and worked highly productively to the end in his studio in Hernstein, Lower Austria: first at the piano, with the albums “Consequence” and “Flow”, then with the Lonely Single Swinger Band, a one-man band in which he played all the instruments himself. His sons helped him, Georg Pepl as editor of the scores, Daniel Pepl as sound engineer. The estate is administered by his son Daniel Pepl; releases from it have appeared on the Vienna label Fullmax Recordings since 2015. Since 2018 Clemens Salesny, Martin Bayer, Andi Schreiber and Valentin Duit have been playing live with Pepl's original tracks; their album “Harry Pepl (tape) & The (Lonely) Single Swinger Band: Live” (2025) took second place in the Best Album category at the Austrian Jazz Award 2025 (award for jazz from Austria).
All details are documented with sources in the Chronology and the Biography.
Free to use, please with the source given. Further press voices with references are in the press archive.
He was an amazing guitarist, pianist and composer. His harmonic, rhythmic and sound concepts were very unique!
Giant of improvisation
was, in his active phase, one of the most important guitarists in the world
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.
Wolfgang is a European, thinks and plays like one. That comes from his cultural heritage, the influences of his classical music studies and probably his closeness to the great role model of his early teacher and mentor Harry Pepl (together with Django Reinhardt probably the best jazz guitarist Europe has produced).
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.
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!
New Yorkers are flabbergasted every time they hear that I come from the Austrian mountains.
I wanted you to be able to hear the room on the CD as well.
For interviews, review copies, print-quality photos and archive material, the contact is Daniel Pepl, son of Harry Pepl, administrator of the musical estate and producer of the releases. Please send enquiries via the form for press enquiries.
The photos may be used with credit in coverage of Harry Pepl and his music. Please ask for any other use.
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Reproduction with the credit “Photo: Felix Nöbauer”; commercial use only after consulting the photographer.
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In the seventies there was hardly a faster jazz guitarist in Europe than the Austrian Harry Pepl.
One of Europe’s leading jazz guitarists
He was an amazing guitarist, pianist and composer. His harmonic, rhythmic and sound concepts were very unique!
Giant of improvisation
was, in his active phase, one of the most important guitarists in the world
Austrian guitarist Harry Pepl has gone a long and imperturbable way.
his very own instrument–the guitar–where he is one of Europe’s undisputed jazz masters
the most spectacular record of one of the most original guitar players of European Jazz in those years
