Wednesday, 4 November 2026
What Austrian jazz owes to Harry Pepl: Air Mail, the Graz class and the Harry Pepl Prize
With the saxophonist Wolfgang Puschnig, the drummer Wolfgang Reisinger and the American bassist Mike Richmond, Harry Pepl formed the band Air Mail, which got its name because the bassist was flown in; the breakthrough came in 1984 at the Moers Festival (renowned festival for jazz and improvised music in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany).
Asked in 2016 about his most lasting influence, Puschnig answered: “Harry Pepl, definitely”. From 1984 Pepl taught as professor of jazz guitar at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG), Austria. Students such as the guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel count him, according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, a leading German daily, “among the most important driving forces in recent European jazz history”. From 2006 to 2015 gamsbART, a concert promoter in Graz, presented the Harry Pepl Prize five times for musicians under 30, to Wolfgang Schiftner, Daniel Riegler, Stefan Heckel, Clemens Salesny and Viola Falb, and in 2007 the trombonist Christian Muthspiel devoted a whole album, “Against The Wind”, to the music of Werner Pirchner, the Austrian composer and vibraphonist, and of Pepl. The quotations are translated from the German.