Projects

Photo by Maria Frodl

HARRY PEPL (tape) & THE (LONELY) SINGLE SWINGER BAND

Harry Pepl – guitar, guitar synth, piano, vocals etc.
&
Clemens Salesny – reeds
Martin Bayer – guitar
Andi Schreiber – violin, vocals
Valentin Duit – drums
Markus Wallner – sound

Harry Pepl, the world-renowned Austrian composer, jazz guitarist, and “improvisational giant” (“Le Monde”), who passed away in 2005, is back on stage!
The quartet interacts with one of the last and so far unpublished creative periods of Pepl: the recordings to which he gave the bitterly ironic title “Harry Pepl’s Lonely Single Swinger Band”. Pepl played all the instruments (guitar, synthesizers, piano, vocals, drums) one at a time in his own recording studio in Hernstein (Lower Austria), spontaneously improvising to the music he had just recorded – a musical dialog with himself.
This wealth of unpublished material is used as a starting point, allowing the quartet to interact and improvise with the legend, every time in a new way. It is as if Harry Pepl were still on stage playing with the live musicians…

CD (2015): Harry Pepl & Salesny/Bayer/Frosch/Heginger

 

 

 

Photo by Rania Moslam

KRBAVAC/SALESNY/DOLP

Karl Wilhelm Krbavac – viola da gamba, e-guitar, piano
Clemens Salesny – reeds, percussion
Niki Dolp – drums, percussion, piano

An orgy without casualties. Just let it hurtle by. Continual red alert, nothing is unthinkable, everything imaginable coming around the next corner – on a scale of tsunami to chamber-musical delicacy. You cannot be angry at this music. Ideally, just hold your breath.
Clemens Salesny and Niki Dolp have reawakened the old madness, in the person of Karl Wilhelm Krbavac, who – silenced by the pandemic – was on the point of selling or mothballing everything. Krbavac has been improvising for 50 years and has an archive of 6500 notated compositions. He has played unbridled blues, twelve-tone music, early music (in order to refine his extreme bowing technique). After mastering double bass, piano, harpsichord, and cello, he transformed himself into the world’s first free-jazz gambist, severing the viola da gamba from its roots in the Renaissance.

 

Photo by Eckhart Derschmidt

CHARLES MINGUS 100 “Triumph Of The Underdog”

Andi Schreiber – violin
Clemens Salesny – reeds
Phil Yaeger – trombone
Martin Bayer – guitar
Gregor Aufmesser – bass
Valentin Duit – drums

Founded for Charles Mingus’ 100th Birthday in 2022.

 

Photo by Rania Moslam

JAZZWERKSTATT WIEN

JazzWerkstatt Wien is an artist’s collective I co-founded in 2004. Currently the artistic directors are Clemens Wenger, Manu Mayr, Peter Rom and me.

 

PAST:

Photo by Maria Frodl

SALESNY/SCHABATA/PREUSCHL/JOOS

Clemens Salesny – reeds
Woody Schabata – vibraphone
Raphael Preuschl – bass, bass ukulele
Herbert Joos – trumpet, fluegelhorn, cornet

For me this “chamber jazz quartet” really is a dream come true – I have been a fan of Herbert Joos’ and Woody Schabata’s music long before I met them…
Especially the fact that it is drumless makes Raphael Preuschl an obvious choice.

 

Photo by Rania Moslam

NEE. WALDER/SALESNY/WENGER

Christoph Walder – horn, Wagner tuba
Clemens Salesny – reeds
Clemens Wenger – keyboards, electronics

Very special instrumentation, furthermore we integrate new interfaces (WiiMotes, various Midi Controllers, TouchOSC on iPhone) to control synths and effects.