Raúl Garello

Historical background

Born on 3 January 1936 in Chacabuco, Raúl Garello came to Buenos Aires after playing in local groups, joined Radio Belgrano's resident orchestra where he met Leopoldo Federico, then accompanied singer Alberto Morán before leading his orchestra. His move to Aníbal Troilo's band, where he stayed as bandoneonist and arranger until 1975, came down to a lucky break: in the RCA-Victor studios, Troilo heard a recording by former singer Roberto Goyeneche and, struck by the orchestration, asked who had written it - learning it was Garello, already one of his own bandoneonists, he asked him to try arranging for the band. In 1967 Garello delivered his first arrangement for Troilo, an instrumental version of "Los mareados," and went on to arrange the whole of Troilo's repertoire except Julián Plaza's pieces - describing himself as more of an "instrumentador" than an arranger, with Troilo having final say over everything he wrote.

A bandleader in his own right from 1965, he recorded with Goyeneche, Rubén Juárez and Susana Rinaldi, debuted a sextet in 1974 at El viejo almacén in San Telmo, then released four instrumental albums from 1977 with a 27-piece orchestra, featuring his own compositions such as "Che Buenos Aires" (premiered by Troilo back in 1969) and "Pasajeros del tiempo." Founding co-director, from 1980, of the Orquesta del Tango de Buenos Aires, he performed at the Teatro Colón in 1990, wrote the entire album Viva el Tango with poet Horacio Ferrer (1987-1988), and in the 1990s arranged Gardel and Le Pera songs for large orchestra, performed in Toulouse and later Dresden with local symphonic ensembles. Far from any rule-breaking impulse, Garello championed a tango understood as "a long evolutionary process spanning over a hundred years," and publicly credited his entire career to the years spent alongside "Pichuco." He died on 29 September 2016.

Source: Mario Safier, "Raul Garello," Todotango.com, https://www.todotango.com/creadores/biografia/786/Raul-Garello/.