piano
Emil Viklický
Played with Pepl in December 1982 in the “International Conclave” at the Bratislava Jazz Days (jazz festival in Bratislava, Slovakia); their “St. Thomas” was released in 1983 on the double LP [“Bratislava Jazz Days 1982”](release:bratislava-jazz-days-1982). As Viklický remembers it, he led the barely rehearsed line-up, and Pepl gave him a sense of security, also because the two had already played together at the Austrian cultural centre in Prague, then in Czechoslovakia (information from Emil Viklický, 25 October 2026). In 1979, at the Debrecen Jazz Days in Hungary, the critic Gábor Turi ranked his duo with Luboš Andršt and Pepl’s duo with [Voja Brković](person:voja-brkovic) among the top group.
Czech jazz pianist and composer, born in 1948 in Olomouc, Moravia, in what is now the Czech Republic. For decades he has combined Moravian folk music with the language of jazz; in 2004, commissioned by Wynton Marsalis, he wrote a melodrama for jazz band based on Václav Havel’s letters from prison.
More about Emil Viklický: viklicky.com
Voices
Since I was in charge of that international group, and there was minimum if any time for rehearsal, of course, I was afraid what is going to happen. Your father (since I have played with him in Prague at Austrian culture house) was the safety for me.
Emil Viklický, Czech jazz pianist, on the “International Conclave” at the 1982 Bratislava Jazz Days (jazz festival in Bratislava, Slovakia) in an email to Daniel Pepl, Harry Pepl’s son
