Wednesday, 4 November 2026
A dissertation, a monograph, many open questions: research on Harry Pepl is only just beginning
Academic research has discovered Harry Pepl, too.
Stefan Heckel took his doctorate in 2024 at the mdw, the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, Austria, with a dissertation on Pepl’s late work and calls him “an improviser of the very highest rank” (translated from the German), Michael Kahr devotes a chapter to him in “Jazz & the City” (University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, Austria, 2016), and Nikolaus Kohler presented a comprehensive portrait at the University of Vienna in 2006. The archive invites further work: the catalogues, the chronology and the open data are freely accessible, there is personal access to listening copies, scans of scores, programmes and print-quality photographs, and a list of open research questions offers topics for theses. Anyone who has photographs, live recordings, programme booklets or memories can contribute them.