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Harry Pepl * 1945  † 2005
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Black-and-white portrait: Harry Pepl sits with a jazz guitar in his arms and looks into the camera; on the wall, the poster of a concert with Mike Richmond and Wolfgang Reisinger in Linz („Montag, 14. Mai“ [“Monday, 14 May”]), an effects unit on the right.
Harry Pepl with an archtop guitarPhoto: musical estate, private collection

Band · 1983 to 1993

Air Mail

Harry Pepl's Austrian-American band

After the Jazzzwio, Air Mail was the band that shaped Harry Pepl most strongly: with Wolfgang Puschnig on alto saxophone and flutes, the American bassist Mike Richmond and Wolfgang Reisinger on drums. The breakthrough came in 1984 at the Moers Festival, followed by the albums “Prayer For Peace” (1985) and “Light Blues” (1988), on which Pepl uses his MIDI guitar.

Harry Pepl Guitar and MIDI guitar, composer

Releases Questions and answers

At a glance

Line-up
Harry Pepl (guitar, MIDI guitar), Wolfgang Puschnig (alto saxophone, flute, bansuri), Mike Richmond (bass), Wolfgang Reisinger (drums)
Also
Robert Riegler (bass, 1988), Karl “Bumi” Fian (trumpet, Moers 1984), Jean-Paul Celea (bass, 1993)
Active
autumn 1983 to 1993
Breakthrough
Moers Festival, May 1984
Releases
Prayer For Peace (Moers Music, 1985), Light Blues (Amadeo, 1988; Universal, 2001)
Spellings
Air Mail (covers, Wolfgang Puschnig), Airmail (literature)

How the band came about

Pepl, Puschnig and Reisinger knew each other from the Vienna Art Orchestra; Pepl said the band had actually come about through the Art Orchestra. The initiative came from Reisinger, and the first rehearsals took place with the bassist Jean-Paul Celea. By autumn 1983 the line-up with Mike Richmond was in place, whom Reisinger had met through Harry Sokal. Because the bassist was flown in, the band was called Air Mail.1

Moers and Prayer For Peace

The breakthrough came in May 1984 at the Moers Festival, with the trumpeter Karl “Bumi” Fian as fifth man. From 2 to 4 February 1985 the band recorded “Prayer For Peace” at the Tonstudio Bauer; the producer was Burkhard Hennen, and the album was released on Moers Music. Puschnig and Richmond wrote two pieces each, Reisinger and Pepl one each: “Radlbremser”, a racing semiquaver theme that he had already wanted to play with the String Summit and for which the necessary power was only there with Air Mail.2

Rehearsing like a pop band

According to Pepl, Air Mail rehearsed „ziemlich verrückt“ [“in a pretty crazy way”]: Pepl and Puschnig played the themes in unison, and they were played to the others instead of being written out.3 Puschnig later said that he had learned from Pepl how to phrase across the bar line.4

Light Blues and the MIDI guitar

“Light Blues” was recorded live on 8 and 9 July 1987 at the Schlachthof Wels, with two tracks recorded in March 1988 at the ORF studio in Graz for “Jazz und Stories” with Peter Turrini, there with Robert Riegler on bass. The album was released on Amadeo in 1988 and reissued by Universal in 2001 in the Austrian Jazzart series. Here Pepl plays the Roland MIDI guitar system with flute, piano and percussion sounds, his second recording with it after “Cracked Mirrors”.5 The title track is called “The Halley's Comet, Light Blue Blues”; “125/250” is a version of Pepl's “Ballentine for Valentine”.6

Concerts until 1993

Documented performances include the concert at the Jazzspelunke in Vienna on 30 March 1985 and an ORF recording on 24 May 1986 in St. Gerold. The band's heyday was in the 1980s; its last concert was in 1993 at the jazz festival in Raab, which Paul Zauner organised, with Jean-Paul Celea on bass.7 In 2006 Puschnig and Reisinger played a set of Pepl's music together with Clemens Salesny and colleagues at the Jazzwerkstatt Wien.8

Notes and sources (8)
  1. Kohler 2006, p. 47 (interview 4-53), pp. 90 to 91. ↩
  2. Kohler 2006, pp. 90 to 93. ↩
  3. Kohler 2006, p. 95 (interview 2-40). ↩
  4. Heckel 2024, p. 219. ↩
  5. Kohler 2006, pp. 94 to 96. ↩
  6. Kohler 2006, pp. 96 to 97; Heckel 2024, pp. 96 to 97. ↩
  7. Kohler 2006, pp. 91, 98 to 99. ↩
  8. Heckel 2024, p. 156. ↩

Parts

It actually came about through the Art Orchestra that we played together more and more.

Harry Pepl On Air Mail; conversation with Nikolaus Kohler (Interview 4-53), quoted in Kohler 2006, p. 47

Among the bands where practising was as intense as it was with Werner, Air Mail definitely belongs too. We really did practise quite madly there.

Harry Pepl On Air Mail; conversation with Nikolaus Kohler (Interview 2-40), quoted in Kohler 2006, p. 95

I simply learned his musical language.

Wolfgang Puschnig Quoted in the obituary “Ciao Habanero” by Rainer Rygalyk, Jazzzeitung, page 6, 2006

Releases

Listen and watch

A selection of Harry Pepl on Spotify, not only from this project.

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Open on Spotify

AirMail - Live At Amiens Jazz Festival 1986

To play it, the video is loaded from YouTube. Data is transferred to YouTube (Google) in the process.

Watch on YouTube

YouTube: Fullmax Recordings, 26 May 2015

Questions and answers

Who played in Air Mail?

Harry Pepl (guitar, MIDI guitar), Wolfgang Puschnig (alto saxophone, flute), Mike Richmond (bass) and Wolfgang Reisinger (drums); later Robert Riegler played bass, and in 1993 Jean-Paul Celea.

Where does the name Air Mail come from?

From the American bassist Mike Richmond, who was flown in for the concerts, as Nikolaus Kohler reports it.

Which albums did Air Mail release?

“Prayer For Peace” (Moers Music, 1985) and “Light Blues” (Amadeo, 1988), which was reissued by Universal in 2001.

How long did the band exist?

From autumn 1983 until the last concert in 1993 at the jazz festival in Raab.

Is it spelled Air Mail or Airmail?

Officially “Air Mail”: that is how it appears on the covers of “Prayer For Peace” and “Light Blues”, and how Wolfgang Puschnig writes it. The literature (Kohler, Heckel, mica) mostly has “Airmail”. It is the same band.

In the chronology

In the press