“Don’t lower your arms, fight for your dreams. Prepare for when a door opens“, said Palito Ortega during the inauguration of the Héctor Cavallero auditorium, of the Argentine Business University (UADE). The 82-year-old artist performed three songs and maintained a relaxed, almost intimate tone when referring to his beginnings as a singer-songwriter.
Indeed, Palito Ortega, after remembering the long friendship that unites him with the producer, created a different atmosphere by leaving aside the celebration for the opening of a new stage in Buenos Aires to speak to the students.
“Follow your vocation, fight for your dreams, for what you want to be and above all work, prepare yourselves so that when a door opens you can be ready and not let that moment pass, but know that Many doors can be closed, but some will open.”he added.
After pointing out the advantages of globalization in terms of diffusion, he told how difficult it was to reach other countries with music and the time that this process took and recalled his beginnings.
“When I came to Buenos Aires I had to work on anything, selling coffee on the street, for example. I remember that the city was difficult for the provincials, I passed by a street and a group of young people, who were called “petiteros”, shouted at me when they saw me “cabecita”, it was a term that was used to discriminate against us.”
“One advantage I had was that I composed my songs and that was an added value. While many performers had to wait for some success to come from outside to translate and record it, I recorded my music.”
a boy like me
And he remembered the legendary drummer Alberto Alcalá who gave him his first method of theory and music theory.
“I sold coffee at the door of a radio station where every afternoon I saw the musicians of the orchestra enter and I established a relationship with the drummer, who encouraged me to study music if I liked it so much, but I couldn’t because the coffee was not enough to study. One day he brought me the method and I started taking classes with him, for free. That musician was Alcalá and that meeting was decisive,” Palito recalled.
Another of the most celebrated moments of the night was the performance of Balada para un loco, by Néstor Fabián, accompanied by the Orquesta Aeropuertos Argentina 2000. The singer made an expressive version of the song by Astor Piazzolla and Horacio Ferrer, acted at times, with an almost operatic ending.
There was dancing, with two couples accompanied by the orchestra and the presentations were led by the actor and member of Les Luthiers, Roberto Antier, who with warmth and sober humor served as master of ceremony.
The students, too
One of the most interesting aspects of the meeting were the different paintings put together by the stable group of the Bachelor of Performing Arts, which is directed, precisely, by Héctor Cavallero, factotum in the creation of the auditorium and hence it bears his name as recognition.
Musicals that were inspired by Elvis Presley, Queen and the Beatlesin this case based on Across The Universe. The cast also developed a few scenes from “Desastre”, the latest musical, released last April with powerful work in both the voices and the choreography. In this dizzying flow of scenes, some very good voices and dancers of elegant plasticity were evident.
During the opening of the meeting, the phrase of the president of the UADE Board of Directors, Héctor Masoero, stood out: “The only way to improve Argentina is with education. At UADE we maintain learning by doing because we focus our work on developing practice”, a statement that, despite being well known, has lost validity.
Masoero highlighted the work of UADE, which became one of the leading private institutions in the country and which, from being a university focused on sciences, such as economics, business and finance, opened up to the technological field and the arts. .
“We are a university that is managed in an austere manner, that allows us to have 50 percent of our students with some type of scholarship,” said the director.
He also maintained that the auditorium, with a large stage and capacity for two hundred people, is not an expense but an investment, which would mean that in addition to being a space for disseminating the work of the art career itself, it will be dedicated to musical activity and theatrical.
An aspect that Cavallero confirmed by pointing out that The auditorium will expand private artistic activity, if not this year, then in 2024.
The finale was with Palito Ortega who was accompanied on guitar by his historic colleague from the Club del Clan, Lalo Fransen. He made three songs. It started with a boy like methen a delicate Self portrait of my life and finally, I have a happy hearta song he composed for his partner from the ’60s, the Spanish singer Marisol.
In the last sections of the song, the curtain opened and Palito was accompanied by the cast of the musicals, which gave the farewell of the night that necessary festive tone.