From Benny Goodman to Atahualpa Yupanqui.

• Author: Gil-Montero, Martha
• Position: Ernesto Acher - Interview

There are a pair of musical groups in Buenos Aires that perform the task of making music with infinite relish, total commitment and untrammeled verve. One is Les Luthiers and the other is La Banda Elastica. The former creates comedy with good music and the latter creates good music with comedy. The nexus of the two is Ernesto Acher.

In 1986 Acher left Les Luthiers and invited seven of Argentina's leading musicians to "recover all of music's playfulness and pleasure." This desire to recreate favorite rhythms and have a good time producing the best sounds--punctuated here and there by hilarious gags--brought forth, in 1987, La Banda Elastica. Four years, several awards and a number of tours later, their dedication to satisfying the most discriminating musical tastes while bringing enjoyment to others and themselves remains undiminished.

The original eight members of La Banda Elastica have achieved this feat while remaining together and playing better every day. Ernesto Acher (assorted winds, keyboards and vocal), Hugo Pierre (alto and soprano sax, clarinet), Juan Amaral (bass, guitar and vocal), Ricardo Lew (guitars and percussion), Enrique Varela (saxes, clarinet and vocal), Carlos Constantini (trumpet, flugelhorn and keyboards), Jorge Navarro (keyboards and vocal), and Enrique Roizner (percussion), together now in the "Third Edition" of La Banda Elastica, graciously collect the praises of the music establishment and the audience.

All members of the group have ample talent but the show unmistakably bears the overall stamp of Ernesto Acher and benefits enormously from his theatrical flair. There are jokes, high jinks and comic effects from start to finish, and when the concert is over Acher and his comrades say goodbye to their audience in the foyer of the theater, shaking hands with one and all.

To start things off, the program is presented rolled in a rubber band. It lists the compositions that will "probably" be played as well as the "certain performers."

The concert begins with a darkened stage which then fills up with fireflies created by special lighting effects. Transitions from one theme to the next are helped along by comic accompaniments: linguistic puns such as "Sweet Georgia Brown" rendered in word-for-word translation as "Dulce Jorgelina Marron," jokes by trumpeter-humorist Carlos Constantini, visual gags such as musical scores flying through the air or aerial combat with paper darts. Throughout the show, the eight performers maintain an unspoken communication and exchange looks and, with perfect timing, exit and enter the stage to form quartets, trios and duos. With each pause they exchange instruments or form new combinations. At given moments one or another will perform as...