The jazz pianist, composer and university professor Harald Neuwirth (84), who lives in western Styria, died on March 23. With him be one of the Central figures of Graz jazz history deceased, it said on the homepage of the University of Art Graz (KUG). Here he had twice been head of the institute (1975-1983 and 2002-2007) and a member of the university council.
According to KUG, Neuwirth was the “architect” of the internationally formative Graz training model. Born on February 2nd, 1939 in Vienna, he belonged to a very musical family, the composer Gösta Neuwirth is his brother, the composer Olga Neuwirth his daughter. He started playing the piano very early, he studied law and classical piano at the Salzburg Mozarteum and the Graz Conservatory. As a jazz musician he was self-taught.
International reputation
In the 1960s, Neuwirth not only made contact with musicians at jam sessions in the Forum Stadtpark and in the jazz cellar “Cave 62”. Among others he worked with Wolfgang Bauer and Gunter Falk as well as with the actress Marianne Kopatz. Harald Neuwirth had his first successes as a jazz musician with his ensembles “We Three” and “We Four”, international renown followed from 1966 with the Erich Kleinschuster Sextet, at that time the most important modern jazz ensemble in Austria, which featured musicians such as Art Farmer and Joe Zawinul stood on the stage. In 1968 he then founded the Harald Neuwirth Consorts, in which the later KUG jazz professors Karlheinz Miklin and Heinrich von Kalnein also played.
As early as 1965, in the founding year of the Jazz Institute, Neuwirth accepted a teaching position for the main subjects jazz piano and improvisation at the then Academy for Music and Performing Arts. In his first period as head of the institute, he introduced a new curriculum, the so-called “two-pillar model”, which became an international model. In 1982 he was appointed full university professor for jazz piano. After his retirement in 2007, he was a member of the University Council of KUG from 2010 to 2018. One of his successors as head of the institute, Sigi Feigl, himself a busy musician: “Many generations of students were able to benefit from the great skills that he was able to convey as a teacher at the Jazz Institute and thus also had the opportunity to achieve a highly successful artistic career”. , so Feigl in an obituary. (apa)
