Big interview

Jazz legend Harry Sokal celebrates his 70th birthday

Saxophone legend Harry Sokal celebrates his 70th birthday at Porgy & Bess in Vienna. He is constantly working on new music in his home studio north of Vienna.

(Bild: Robert Fröwein)

Cheeky, cheeky and punctual - the Viennese jazz saxophonist Harry Sokal considers these three qualities to be decisive for his unique career. Today he is celebrating his 70th birthday at Porgy & Bess. We visited him at his home north of Vienna to revisit his exciting life.

The house stands tranquilly at the beginning of a quiet lane in the small town of Breitstetten in the Lower Austrian district of Gänserndorf. In 1989, after a few turbulent years in Vienna, Harry Sokal fulfilled his dream of having his own atelier and studio there. Gone are the days of noise pollution that accompanied him for so long. "I practiced all the time," he recalls in the Krone interview, "I often started at 7 a.m. because of the disturbance, but someone always got upset. In my first apartment in Hernalser Rokitanskygasse, there was even a death threat on the door once. These problems no longer exist here in the country." Sokal is a saxophonist with heart and soul and wrote national music history with his profession. Most of his fans know him from jazz. However, as a hard worker, Sokal never shied away from starting projects in other genres. The only thing that was important to him was freedom. "I could have started at the Theater an der Wien, but that would have limited me too much."

Networking and street music
Today, journalists like to name Sokal one of the "Top 10 best post-Coltrane saxophonists in Europe", but at the very beginning he could do next to nothing. "I started playing the recorder in the family band and also had piano lessons. I picked up a clarinet for the first time when I was nine and from there it wasn't far to the saxophone." Sokal felt the desire to break out early on. He left home for the first time at the age of 13, two years later he swept up the dirt in front of the Viennese cult club Camera and came into contact with Harri Stojka. From then on, Sokal acted as a sausage roll fetcher for his former band Gypsy Love. Along the way, he networked with industry giants such as Karl Ratzer and "Supermax" Kurt Hauenstein. On Mariahilfer Straße, he plays to passers-by. "I bought myself a snack at the food stall with the little money I made."

(Bild: Robert Fröwein)

Sokal mastered the hard school of street music. He founded his first collaborations and shocked his mother. After the early death of his father, he inherited around 20,000 shillings and presented her with a fait accompli. "I told her I was going to New York and never coming back," laughs Sokal today. He spends six months doing restoration work and clearing out. He slept in a tiny room for around two dollars a night. However, the "Big Apple" turned out to be too big for him. Shortly afterwards, he moves to London, where Sokal pulls the ripcord after two weeks. "I had absolutely no chance of gaining a foothold in the scene there." The big goal of becoming the world's best saxophonist, however, always drove the Viennese. Years later, when he was teaching saxophone and improvisation at the Bruckner University in Linz, he would impress upon his students that they should practice ten hours a day for ten years - then they would be halfway there with the good guys.

Immortalized on 600 recordings
With this ambition, Sokal developed a versatile career from the 1970s onwards that could not be pigeonholed. He became a member of the Vienna Art Orchestra in the early days, worked with international greats such as Art Blakey, Dave Holland, Wynton Marsalis and Joe Zawinul and created a wide variety of projects, from Depart to Groove to Roots Ahead, with which he earned his living. Sokal played with the legendary Art Farmer for a quarter of a century. After his death, he founded the popular tribute project "I Remember Art". The passionate improviser was also not above helping to shape Austropop. You can hear Sokal in the Hallucination Company, with Wolfgang Ambros or on Falco's cult album "Einzelhaft". "I was cheeky, cheeky and, above all, punctual," says Sokal, summing up why he was usually the first when pop stars needed saxophone tracks, "I'm immortalized on a total of around 600 recordings. I'm there when I need to be there, I do my job and I'm gone. Passionately and efficiently."

(Bild: Robert Fröwein)

Sokal is just as unafraid of contact as he is of taking a break. "I'm a stylistic chameleon, I've always liked that. I love practicing, improvising and playing. For me, music is not work." In his studio in Breitstetten, he has a drum set by the great Idris Muhammad and massive ORF speakers, among other things, which provide a special sound experience. The technical side fascinates Sokal just as much as the musical side. "I'm an old tinkerer and make something out of everything," he says as he shows off his small but extremely well-stocked workshop, "old amplifiers, microphones or even electronics. I love making things work again or being able to change them." Sokal installed the wood paneling himself in 1989 - at a cost of around 70,000 schillings. "An architect looked at the house and said I needed a million for the planning and another million for the extension. Not at all."

Making people happy
The only thing the energetic passionate musician has to watch out for is his motor skills. His cruciate ligaments are gone and the last time he fell down the stairs he tore three more ligaments, which resulted in operations. A handrail now adorns the stairs and Sokal is relaxed about his limited mobility: "I can't walk any more, my knees float quickly due to the missing cruciate ligaments. When I get on a train, I have to be careful. But I go to the gym as often as possible to keep myself in shape. I should eat a bit more sensibly, but home cooking is just so good." Sokal is just as open-minded about the music he plays as he is about his surroundings. He enjoys learning from younger artists or former students and appreciates the interaction in his studio. "But the best thing is when I can send as many people as possible home after concerts with fulfilled hearts."

(Bild: Robert Fröwein)

Birthday at Porgy & Bess
Tonight, March 18, on his 70th birthday, Sokal will perform as one third of the Free Tenors with Bernhard Wiesinger and Ondrej Štverácek at Porgy & Bess. You can look forward not only to the highest art of improvisation, but also to a jubilarian in a great mood who will be happy to share one or two anecdotes from his moving career. Tickets and further information about the concert are still available at www.porgy.at. Tickets are also likely to be available at the box office.