Hermann Szobel (born 1958) is an Austrian former

pianist A pianist ( , ) is an individual musician who plays the piano. Since most forms of Western music can make use of the piano, pianists have a wide repertoire and a wide variety of styles to choose from, among them traditional classical music, ja ...

and

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

. He produced and recorded a single

jazz fusion Jazz fusion (also known as fusion and progressive jazz) is a music genre that developed in the late 1960s when musicians combined jazz harmony and jazz improvisation, improvisation with rock music, funk, and rhythm and blues. Electric guitars, ...

album, titled "Szobel," (1976) at the age of 18, demonstrating, in the words of a "Down Beat" reviewer (9 September 1976), "a conception and technique far in advance of most musicians twice his age."

Biography

Szobel was born in 1958 in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

to mother Sonja (née Grajonca) Szobel. Szobel is the nephew of promoter Bill Graham. Szobel was "a child prodigy who began his classical training at the age of six" who "spent the majority of his practicing hours on pieces by Chopin." Pianists

Martial Solal Martial Solal (born August 23, 1927) is a French jazz pianist and composer. Biography Solal was born in Algiers, French Algeria, to Algerian Jewish parents. He was persuaded to study clarinet, saxophone, and piano by his mother, who was an opera ...

and

Keith Jarrett Keith Jarrett (born May 8, 1945) is an American jazz and classical music pianist and composer. Jarrett started his career with Art Blakey and later moved on to play with Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis. Since the early 1970s, he has also been a ...

were two major influences on his work. The album "Szobel" features extremely complicated compositions comparable to those of

Frank Zappa Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American musician, composer, and bandleader. His work is characterized by wikt:nonconformity, nonconformity, Free improvisation, free-form improvisation, sound experimen ...

. The music is jazz-based but contains elements of rock and Western classical music. Szobel's impressive piano virtuosity is noticeable throughout the album. The other musicians on "Szobel" are Michael Visceglia on

bass Bass or Basses may refer to: Fish * Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species Music * Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in the bass range: ** Bass (instrument), including: ** Acoustic bass gui ...

, Bob Goldman on

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

, Dave Samuels on

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

including

marimba The marimba () is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars that are struck by mallets. Below each bar is a resonator pipe that amplifies particular harmonics of its sound. Compared to the xylophone, the timbre ...

and

vibraphone The vibraphone is a percussion instrument in the metallophone family. It consists of tuned metal bars and is typically played by using mallets to strike the bars. A person who plays the vibraphone is called a ''vibraphonist,'' ''vibraharpist,' ...

, and Vadim Vyadro on

tenor sax The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor and the alto are the two most commonly used saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B (while th ...

clarinet The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound. Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches ...

, and

flute The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless ...

. Obscure even when it was released (on Arista Records) in 1976, the album "Szobel" was issued on CD by Laser's Edge in 2012. Hermann Szobel disappeared from the music world after this album. His mother had filed a missing persons report in 2002. It is thought he was living in Jerusalem, and then later in San Francisco.

Katarzyna Kozyra Katarzyna Kozyra (born 1963) is a Polish video artist. She studied German studies at the University of Warsaw (1985–1988). In 1993, she also graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw where she studied sculpture and Hochschule für Grap ...

, the Polish artist and filmmaker, met Szobel in Jerusalem while working on her project called "Looking for Jesus" (Polish: Szukając Jezusa), a film about people with a condition known as

Jerusalem Syndrome Jerusalem syndrome is a group of mental phenomena involving the presence of religiously themed obsessive ideas, delusions, or other psychosis-like experiences that are triggered by a visit to the city of Jerusalem. It is not endemic to one single ...

. Szobel agreed to record the conversation, but you cannot see his face in Kozyra's movie. He was living like a homeless man, eating what he could find in the streets, but still being an artist.

References

External links

* Austrian pianists Austrian male composers Austrian composers Living people Austrian male pianists 21st-century pianists 21st-century male musicians 1958 births {{austria-composer-stub