Halley's Comet Light Blue Blues

Kohler analyses the harmony: the theme moves from the first to the fourth degree in G major, is led via a II-V-I cadence to G sharp major and then begins again a semitone higher; the middle section sounds “Mozart-like”. The version on the 2015 double CD is listed with the AKM (Austria's collecting society for composers, lyricists and music publishers) as version 2, with Martin Bayer and Clemens Salesny as arrangers (ISWC T0093203269). The Kresten Osgood Quintet played the piece at the Copenhagen Jazz Festival in 2023.

Pepl's handwritten lead sheet (“Halley's Comet Lightblue Blues”) confirms the structure: A1 in G, A2 a semitone higher in A flat, then a section B; below it the solo form and the instruction “After Solos 1x A1, next Soloist in Ab, on Cue A2 → B”.

In the catalogue of the INA (Institut national de l'audiovisuel, the French archive for radio and television), the piece is documented in three concert recordings by Radio France (France's public radio broadcaster): with the Michel Portal Unit on Monday, 10 March 1986, as “Halley's comet right blue blues”; with Air Mail, in a recording which the INA dates to Thursday, 15 May 1986, as “Light blue blues”; and again with the Portal Unit on Saturday, 30 May 1987, at the jazz festival in Amiens, France, as “Comète”. Pepl's son Daniel Pepl confirms that “Comète” is this piece. It does not appear on the album “Men's Land” recorded the same evening; it survives only in the radio recording.