Michel Portal Unit

The road to France

Pepl had had contacts with the French scene since the early 1980s, among others through Daniel Humair; in Paris he also appeared with the trumpeter Eric Le Lann.¹ Michel Portal had founded his Unit in 1971, with changing line-ups. The first concert with Pepl that can be reconstructed took place on 23 September 1984 at the former Schlachthof (slaughterhouse) in Graz, at the Steirischer Herbst (festival of contemporary art in Graz): Portal, Pepl, George Lewis, Joachim Kühn, Jean-François Jenny-Clark and Daniel Humair. On 22 and 23 March 1985 the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris followed, as a quintet with Mino Cinelu, and later the Centre Pompidou.² At the Banlieues Bleues festival in Montreuil near Paris, Pepl played with Portal, Jack DeJohnette, Mino Cinelu and Jean-François Jenny-Clark on Friday, 7 March 1986; between 1984 and 1990 the festival's archive records only this one appearance by Pepl.³

Turbulence and Men's Land

On Portal's album “Turbulence”, recorded in 1986 at the Studio S.E.I. in Paris, Pepl can be heard on the piece “Pastor”.⁴ On 30 May 1987 the Unit played at the Festival International de Jazz d'Amiens (the 7th according to the CD sleeve) in the Grand Théâtre of the Maison de la Culture d'Amiens: Portal, Dave Liebman, Pepl, Jean-François Jenny-Clark, Jack DeJohnette and Mino Cinelu. The live recording was released as “Men's Land” on Label Bleu; Pepl plays on the track “Ahmad The Terrible” and, on the CD, additionally on “Pastor”. Around Amiens, Portal also performed at the end of May and beginning of June 1987 at the festival in Angoulême (Thursday, 28 May) and at the Théâtre de Boulogne-Billancourt; the captions by the photographer Guy Le Querrec name Portal, DeJohnette and Liebman for these concerts. Pepl was probably there too, but this is not documented.⁵ Further concerts took place in Geneva and Le Mans, there with Christof Lauer. According to Kohler, both albums were honoured with awards.⁶

Recordings by Radio France

The catalogue of the INA, the archive of French radio and television, lists several concert recordings by Radio France, the French public radio, with Pepl in Portal’s groups: Michel Portal Plus on Sunday, 10 June 1984, at the jazz festival in Angoulême, France, with Harry Sokal, Jean-Paul Celea, Claude Barthélemy (electric bass) and a title “Pepl's theme”, the Unit on Monday, 10 March 1986, with DeJohnette and the percussionist Jean Schwartz, with Pepl’s “Radlbremser” and “Das Auge des Maulwurfs” on the programme, each paired with a piece by Portal (“Pastor”, “No Forte”) and played in direct succession or segueing into it, and the complete Amiens concert of 1987 with Pepl’s “Comète”, which is not on “Men's Land”. France Musique broadcast excerpts in 1985 and 1987. The recordings can only be heard on site at the INAthèque.⁷

Freedom

In this scene Pepl played mainly free music with partly composed pieces. For him, Jack DeJohnette was the only musician with whom he understood each other immediately at the first rhythmic impulse. Pepl himself felt that his work in France was hardly noticed outside the country.⁸ In the 1990s he met Portal once more at the Inntöne festival (jazz festival in Diersbach, Upper Austria), together with Wolfgang Reisinger, Franz Hackl and Toninho Horta; the year is recorded inconsistently in the sources.⁹