cultural policy, cultural diplomacy
Peter Marboe
As director, headed the Austrian Cultural Institute in New York, which co-organised the festival “Beyond the Sound of Music” in 1985. On the opening night, Wednesday, 15 May 1985, Pepl and Werner Pirchner played as Jazzzwio, with Don Moye, at the Ohio Theater in New York; on Thursday, 9 May 1985, Marboe wrote a letter of welcome to the festival participants. In his memoirs “Mehr Kultur in der Politik” (“More Culture in Politics”, 2024, p. 93) he names concerts by Jazzzwio among his examples of contemporary Austrian art in the USA. According to Marboe’s recollection, a friendship with Pepl and Pirchner developed over the following years.
Austrian jurist and cultural politician (born 1942 in Vienna), director of the Austrian Cultural Institute in New York, USA, from 1984 to 1987, Vienna’s city councillor for culture from 1996 to 2001 and artistic director of the Vienna Mozart Year 2006, marking the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth. In 1985 his institute organised the festival “Beyond the Sound of Music” together with steirischer herbst (Styrian Autumn, the festival of contemporary art in Graz, Austria) and The Kitchen (an arts and performance space in New York), at which the Jazzzwio of Harry Pepl and Werner Pirchner, the Austrian composer and vibraphonist, performed.
Voices
“I also think that they were so successful in New York not least because, after all, hardly anyone expected that such wonderful jazz could come from the ‘land of waltz and operetta, Austria’.”
Peter Marboe, former director of the Austrian Cultural Institute in New York, USA, and later Vienna’s city councillor for culture, on the success of Harry Pepl and Werner Pirchner (Jazzzwio) at the festival “Beyond the Sound of Music” in New York in 1985, from an email to Daniel Pepl; he himself puts the phrase “land of waltz and operetta, Austria” in quotation marks (in his German original he wrote “Walzer-und” without a space after the hyphen, which is his own spelling)
“For Harry was not only a magnificent musician but also a wonderful human being.”
Peter Marboe, former director of the Austrian Cultural Institute in New York, USA, on Harry Pepl, from an email to Daniel Pepl