HARRY PEPL
«I have so many recordings, but this is good anyway... Should I just mow the lawn? The other way round it's also crazy, because I do it all the time and I'm always on it.»
Harry Pepl, 2005
«I have so many recordings, but this is good anyway... Should I just mow the lawn? The other way round it's also crazy, because I do it all the time and I'm always on it.»
Harry Pepl, 2005
Harry Pepl's "One-Man Band"
For health reasons, Pepl was no longer able to play in public from 1996 onwards, but this did not reduce his productivity. In his recording studio, especially in the last years of his life, he tried to record and name every inspired moment. Thus, his already considerable compositional output grew considerably.
Harry Pepl in his recording studio in Hernstein, Lower Austria, with his MIDI guitar. Photo credit: Fullmax Recordings, 2020
Pepl became more and more involved with piano and drums, was also active as a scat vocalist, but still played guitar. It was precisely thanks to the technical possibilities of the MIDI guitar that he was able to expand the sound spectrum in many ways - for example, he was able to make it sound like a bass or various other instruments. In this creative process Pepl created his own "One-Man-Band".
He interweaved the soundtracks and reacted spontaneously to what he had just recorded, a musical dialogue with himself.
«The music of Harry Pepl's Lonely Single Swinger Band is pure Pepl. The compositions are frozen real-time improvisations of different instrumental constellations and styles, whose tracks have been improvised reacting to each other. They offer chamber music up to beautiful melodies, samples, soundscapes and jazz with Pepl's unmistakable guitaristic signature»
Pepls Lonely Single Swinger Band is released
In 2004, during Pepl's lifetime, saxophonists Clemens Salesny, Wolfgang Schiftner and trumpeter Lorenz Raab had already gathered at the Salzburg Jazz Autumn to improvise on selected works from this creative period. They did so against the background of a slideshow magnificently staged by jazz photographer Rainer Rygalyk.
So Pepl was definitely willing to see and hear his late works performed live in front of an audience - by and with other musicians.
Rehearsal at the Salzburg Jazz Autumn 2004. from left to right: Lorenz Raab (trumpet), Wolfgang Schiftner (saxophone), Clemens Salesny (saxophone), Harry Pepl. photo credit: Rainer Rygalyk, 2004
«For me it's nice not to have to perform, that I don't have the stress, whether someone likes it or not. I can play, and for once I like it the way it is.»
The double CD "Harry Pepl & Clemen Salesny / Martin Bayer / Peter Primus Frosch / Agnes Heginger", released in 2015, was the first release of sound material of Harry Pepl's Lonely Single Swinger Band. In 2019 the EP "Harry Pepl - Lonely Single Swinger Band (Art of Trio, Vol.1)" was digitally released. It was taken from Pepl's musical legacy and was remixed for the release.
Saxophone player Clemens Salesny and jazz-guitar player Martin Bayer, the driving creative minds behind the double CD from 2015, have since been intensively engaged with the sound material of Harry Pepl's Lonely Single Swinger Band. After a concert series in 2018 with a new line-up (with violinist Andi Schreiber and drummer Valentin Duit), which is now being continued, another recording release is planned for 2020.
from left to right: Andi Schreibert (violin), Martin Bayer (guitar), Clemens Salesny (sax), Valentin Duit (drums). Photo credit: Maria Frodl, 2018