e was born in Rosario, province of Santa Fe and was the third sibling of the six that José Lipezker and Ana Dobin had.

In 1929, a few days after his arrival in Buenos Aires, Leo joined the ranks of Pedro Maffia. It was a seven-year tenure alongside this leader until he joined the Miguel Caló’s aggregation as lead violin. The latter orchestra was already announcing the instrumental evolution of the 40s.

In the 50s, precisely between 1953 and 1955, he turned out a key member of the Roberto Caló orchestra. Horacio Ferrer in his El Libro del Tango highlights the solos by Leo in Eduardo Arolas’s “La cachila” and in Osvaldo Tarantino’s “En fa menor” on Caló’s recordings for the Orfeo label.

Despite his technique was not outstanding, Leo was noted for his taste of expressing tango. His style was lilting, heartfelt and closely connected to those of José Nieso, Raúl Kaplún and Mauricio Mise. They all represented what the Jew violin school had been in tango.

Later embracing the avant-garde trends, Leo in 1958 was member of a quartet known as Los Notables del Tango that included the pianist Manuel Flores (for the recording of “Ciudad dormida” was replaced by Osvaldo Berlingieri), the bandoneon player Leopoldo Federico and Omar Murtagh on double bass. That experience produced a record that contained four tangos.

Furthermore in 1961 he put together the Primer Cuarteto de Cámara del Tango (First Tango String Quartet) with arrangements by Pascual Mamone. Its members were Leo and Hugo Baralis (violins), Mario Lalli (viola) and José Bragato (cello). Thanks to this quartet, that succeeded in recording two long-playing records, Mamone returned to his musical activity that he had quit to become a medical store salesman after a frustrating experience with the recording company Philips. Lipesker knew quite well the Mamone’s capabilites because the latter had written charts for Korn.

Thereafter Leo formed a sextet with Osvaldo Requena (piano), Daniel Lomuto and Armando Calderaro aka —Pajarito— (bandoneons) and Leo and Mauricio Misé (violins). The group was able to record a long-playing disc.

He was connected with Alejandro Romay with whom he had created Grandes Valores del Tango, a radio program with a wide audience that was aired on Radio Libertad. That connection gave rise to the composition of a series of anodyne tangos like “Todo es amor”, “Por este amor” and “Puede ser que no te rías” that Leo signed with the sobriquet Riel. The same happened with a long series of trivial pieces with other lyricists. Among them we are surprised to find Héctor Stamponi writing words for “Tuyo es mi corazón” in 1964.

In spite of their low level, those tangos were published by Julio Korn and were included, nearly in a compulsory way, in the songbooks of several artists that even recorded them. That commercial structure, that manufactured pseudo hits, speeded up the decline of tango. Its first victims were the authentical artists of the genre.

Due to his ambivalence, Leo Lipesker had a big responsibility in such a degradation, while at the same time he kept one of his feet grounded on good tango.

In 1958 he provided for the singer Roberto Rufino —also linked with Romay— an orchestral background of high quality with charts by the bandoneonist Luis Stazo and, in 1964, he composed the tango “Eslava” with Mamone.