Pori Jazz 1992: Harry Pepl with John Purcell’s Blue Brass Connection

At the 27th Pori Jazz Festival in Pori, Finland, held every year since 1966 and one of the oldest jazz festivals in Europe, Harry Pepl played in July 1992 in the band that the festival archive lists as “John Purcell´s Blue Brass Connection”: with John Purcell (saxophone), Graham Haynes (trumpet), Ron Burton (piano), Kenny Davis (bass), Ronnie Burrage (drums) and the Upper Austrian trombonist Paul Zauner, who had been touring the world with US jazz musicians as the Blue Brass Connection since 1985.

The archive lists three performances: on Friday, 17 July 1992, on the main stage at Kirjurinluoto in a programme starting at 5 pm that it also lists for Ringo Starr and His All Starr Band, the same evening at the Village Gate, and on Saturday, 18 July 1992, at the Nuorisokeskus, the youth centre. Pepl appears in the archive only in this year. In 1992, 515 musicians played in Pori, on 21 stages at 13 venues.

A few months later Purcell, Davis, Burrage, Zauner and Pepl formed the core of Abstract Truth, whose album “Beginnings” was recorded in New York and released in 1994. Pori is the earliest documented joint performance so far of these musicians with Pepl. A video of the band in Pori is on Ronnie Burrage’s YouTube channel; it probably dates from this festival. All performances are listed under Festivals and venues and in the Chronology, and the festival archive page in the Press archive.

The photo shows Ronnie Burrage, Harry Pepl and John Purcell in the early 1990s in the home studio in Hernstein, Lower Austria, Austria.