Abstract Truth

Abstract Truth was the contemporary-minded band of the Upper Austrian trombonist Paul Zauner, who had been touring the world since 1985 with his Blue Brass Connection and American jazz musicians. For Abstract Truth, as the APA reported at the end of 1994, he brought together an international line-up: the New York saxophonist John Purcell, a member of the World Saxophone Quartet and of Jack DeJohnette’s Special Edition; the bassist Kenny Davis, who recorded with Art Farmer among others; the drummer Ronnie Burrage from St. Louis (Missouri, USA), who worked with McCoy Tyner; and Harry Pepl on guitar and guitar synthesiser. The result, it said, ranged “from fusion to avant-garde”.¹

Recordings in New York

On Friday, 13 November 1992, Der Standard, a Vienna daily, reported that “a few weeks ago” Zauner had recorded “two albums” in New York (USA) with a new band “featuring, among others, the Austrians Harry Pepl and Harry Sokal”, which would “play in a more contemporary way” than the Blue Brass Connection.² The booklet of “Beginnings” supports this: Colette Oswald’s band photo shows the five musicians on the Bow Bridge in Central Park, and Harry Sokal appears in the thank-you list. It gives no recording date; it remembers George Adams and Carter Jefferson, who died in November 1992 and December 1993, and so was completed at the end of 1993 at the earliest.³ Kohler dates the recording to 1994 and mentions rehearsals around May 1993 in Pepl’s home studio in Hernstein (Lower Austria, Austria).⁴ On Wednesday, 5 May 1993, Pepl played with Purcell, Zauner, Burrage and the bassist Jeff Andrews in the former synagogue in St. Pölten (Lower Austria).⁵

The album

“Beginnings” was released in 1994 on Amadeo (former Vienna label for jazz and classical music) as 523 570-2, supported by the cultural department of the state of Upper Austria, the Ministries of Education and Foreign Affairs and the American Music Project. In December 1994 the Salzburger Nachrichten, a Salzburg daily, counted “Paul Zauner’s ‘Abstract Truth’” among the label’s “all of them great albums”.⁶ All eight tracks come from within the band: two by Purcell, three by Pepl (“Die kleine Mutti”, “Strange Uhudler”, “Song for Gil”), and one each by Davis, Burrage and Zauner. Zauner and Pepl play “Strange Uhudler” as a duo, Pepl on guitar synthesiser. In 1995 the Kronen Zeitung, Austria’s largest-circulation daily, wrote that in the “two-part melody group” Pepl was the “defining creative force”, electronically steering his instrument “from vibraphone to organ registers”.⁷

On stage

In July 1992 Purcell, Davis, Burrage, Zauner and Pepl played at the Pori Jazz Festival in Finland together with Graham Haynes and Ron Burton, listed in the festival archive as “John Purcell´s Blue Brass Connection”, the earliest line-up of the group documented so far (see Blue Brass Connection); a video from Pori is on Ronnie Burrage’s YouTube channel.⁸ For Sunday, 12 November 1995, APA, trend and the Kronen Zeitung announced Abstract Truth with Harry Pepl at the Vienna jazz venue Reigen, on the same evening as the Archie Shepp Quartet (no report of the concert is known; the year remains open); a concert at the WIST in Graz on Tuesday, 24 October 1995, had been cancelled. By then the APA was already announcing the group as the “band around Harry Pepl”.⁹