Blue Brass Connection

From 1985 the Upper Austrian trombonist Paul Zauner travelled the world with changing American jazz musicians as the Blue Brass Connection; in January 1990 the Austrian news agency APA reported a tour with the saxophonist George Adams, the pianist Ron Burton and the drummer Ronnie Burrage.¹

Pori Jazz 1992

At the 27th Pori Jazz Festival in Pori, Finland, 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 the New York saxophonist John Purcell, Graham Haynes on trumpet, Ron Burton on piano, the bassist Kenny Davis, Ronnie Burrage on drums and Zauner on trombone. The archive lists three performances: on Friday, 17 July 1992, on the main stage at Kirjurinluoto in the programme starting at 5 pm, in the evening at the Village Gate, and on Saturday, 18 July 1992, at the Nuorisokeskus, the youth centre.² A video of the band with Purcell, Davis, Burrage and Pepl in Pori is on Ronnie Burrage’s YouTube channel; it probably dates from this festival.

The path to Abstract Truth

A few months later Purcell, Davis, Burrage, Zauner and Pepl formed the core of Abstract Truth. In November 1992 Der Standard, the Vienna daily, wrote that Zauner had recorded in New York with a new band in which Pepl played and which would play “in a more contemporary way” than the Blue Brass Connection, “a troupe of traditional sounds, forms and tempos”; at the time he counted Graham Haynes on cornet and Ron Burton on piano among its members.³ Pori is thus the earliest documented joint performance so far of Pepl with Purcell, Davis and Burrage.