Draft:Oscar García Urrego

Oscar García Urrego (24 August 1942 – 21 February 2025)^[1] was a Colombian pianist, arranger, composer, and musical director. He worked for over years with Renato Capriles and Los Melódicos from Venezuela, where he also founded the Orquesta La Playa in 1967.

Biography

Oscar García was born in Santa Fe de Antioquia, a municipality in the Antioquia Department, Colombia, on 24 August 1942.

Although born in Colombia, García's fame as a pianist and arranger developed in Venezuela, where he founded in 1967 the orchestra La Playa de Maracaibo, and later with his lifelong collaboration with Renato Capriles and his orchestra Los Melódicos. La Playa was a very successful orchestra founded in 1967, where many famous singers, such as Nelson Henríquez, Willy Quintero, Perucho Navarro, Boby Small and Joe Urdaneta, were regular performers. Some of La Playa's greatest hits in Colombia include Cositas buenas, El Camello, Pajarillo ruiseños, Promesas de cumbiambera and La conocí.

In late 1969, Oscar García and Perucho Navarro joined Los Melódicos, which had been founded by Renato Capriles in 1958. Oscar joined Los Melódicos as a pianist, arranger and musical director, and Perucho Navarro, as guarachero. García first work with Los Melódicos was La Única, which included singles such as Recuerdos 16, a remake of Mosaico #1 (El manicero) by Billo's Caracas Boys, and sung by Manolo Monterrey and Rafa Galindo.

For Oscar García, the collaboration with Los Melódicos marked the beginning of a long and successful career of three decades, to such an extent that the AI defines him as the musician who “participated in the perfection of the style of the orchestra Los Melódicos”. In 1986, faced with the musical boom of Dominican merengue, salsa, and the Caribbean soca, Renato Capriles and Oscar García made the decision to introduce the technomerengue into the orchestra, bringing a different, refreshing, new sound that would captivate a young audience. García worked with Los Melódicos until 1994, and in 1995 he settled in the state of Florida, in the United States.

On September 18, 2013, the Miami Herald dedicated a story to him, highlighting that at that moment in his life he felt happy and satisfied playing the piano and performing in a public dining room for the elderly in the Sweetwater area. In the same year, the maestro composed and recorded 12 symphonic arrangements for poems by Rubén Darío in a studio at Miami Dade College. Nevertheless, and while officially retired, García also made arrangements for eight songs for Saúl Campalella’s orchestra Voces de Billo Hoy, later known as Voces de Ayer: El mejoral, Calláte corazón, Arturo García, María Espejo y el Mosaico Corralero (La cañaguatera, El vivo y el bobo, La manzana y La gorra no se cae).

García was also very active on his YouTube channel “Antología Musical” (Musical Anthology), where he used to recall all his experiences of over half a century. García was lovingly known as “el cachaco del piano” (“the piano nerd”), a nickname given to him by the Venezuelan singer Molly Dick.

García died in Homestead, Florida, on 21 February 2025, at the age of 82, leaving a legacy in the form of hundreds of musical arrangements..^[1]