Jorge Milchberg died on August 20 in Paris and the Argentine embassy announced it today.
Argentine musician and composer Jorge Milchberg died at the age of 93 in Paris, after a long career that reached its peak in the 1960s, when his traditional theme arrangements and lyrics The condor happens catapulted Peruvian composition to world exhibition.
The news was only released today by the Argentine Embassy in France, although he actually died on August 20. The cause of his death has not been specified.
The embassy specified that the funeral will take place in “close family privacy” in the Parisian cemetery of Père Lachaise and that his body will rest in the town of Thénisy, in northern France.
a prestigious career
The son of Polish parents and born on September 5, 1928 in Buenos Aires, Milchberg once commented that “I come from a family of mathematicians and my brother was a high-level mathematician”. Regarding him training him, he said: “I have had several piano teachers and no one has been helpful.”
Milchberg arrived in 1955 with the famous dancer Maria Fux in Paris. “She hired me to accompany her on the piano and one day she told me that she had two tickets to go to a festival in Poland. In the end I stayed in Europe,” she recalled.
In Paris, Milchberg performed in the famous L’Escala concert hall in the Latin Quarter. There he met his wife for five decades of life together, until her death a few years ago.
“When I met my children’s future mother, that’s where my life really began. It is the best thing that has happened in my life. Not only for the three children I love and who are in different parts of the world, but that woman has been the complement of my life in a total way. For me she was unmatched. Until her death and so did I. Because I am dead. You see me, but I’m just sitting here and I feel good, ”she said.
He was part of the Los Incas, a Latin American musical group that in 1963 recorded the emblematic zarzuela The condor happens, composed in 1913 by the Peruvian composer Daniel Alomía Robles. Milchberg put in some lyrics.
In France he forged a career in which he was also an orchestrator and accompanied the French singer Marie Laforêt on stage in 1968 and 1969. “I was conductor of Marie Laforêt’s orchestra and we traveled the world,” he recalls. “We went to Mexico and we were in Algeria, among other countries.”
A trained pianist, Milchberg was best known around the world for his use of the charango. In 1970, arranged by Milchberg, English lyrics by Paul Simon and a different English title (If I could), the song was a worldwide hit for New York folk duo Simon & Garfunkel on their fifth LP, the multi-platinum Problem water bridge.
According to Milchberg, “Paul Simon was at a Los Incas concert at the Theater de l’Est Parisien, where I played The condor happens and fell in love with it. Then I toured with him, at least two in the United States and another in Italy “.
The paternity dispute
Along with the success came the paternity controversy of The condor happens. In various editions of the Los Incas single albums, as well as on LPs such as Flûtes des Andes, it seems attributed to “Inca” or “El Inca”, which was Milchberg’s pseudonym.
On the Simon & Garfunkel version of the album problematic water bridge It is listed as a “traditional” song, arranged by Jorge Milchberg and Paul Simon. But then in a Los Incas compilation also called Los Incas it appears with the credit of “Milchberg / Robles”.
Jorge Milchberg cites a thesis on law by the Argentine lawyer Ricardo Rojas, The folk song – Introduction to the style of Argentine folklore, as evidence in its favor. «In his thesis on the author of El Cóndor Pasa, Robles is not there. I am. This allowed me to win the lawsuit against the North American publisher of Robles, who signed The condor happens as if it were yours, ”he explained.
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Source: Clarin
