Ernesto Acher
| Ernesto Acher | |
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October 9, 1939 Buenos Aires, Argentina |
Ernesto Acher (Buenos Aires, October 9, 1939) is an Argentine comedian, actor, composer, arranger, multi-instrumentalist and orchestral conductor. Between 1971 and 1986 he was a member of the celebrated Argentine group Les Luthiers, with which he acted as composer, comedian, singer, and performer on more than twenty instruments, some of which he created himself. Before separating from the group, he was involved in individual projects as composer – including a soundtrack, a quartet for clarinet and strings, a string sextet and a symphonic poem for viola and orchestra. In 1988 he founded the La Banda Elástica (The Elastic Band), gathering some of the most outstanding Argentine jazz musicians. The band dissolved in 1993. Since then he has developed several musical and comedy projects, and performed as an orchestral conductor.
As a child, he studied piano and, in his teens, as he became interested in jazz, the clarinet. In 1965 he graduated as architect from the University of Buenos Aires's Architecture and Urbanism School, where he worked also as a teacher on special-structures design. In parallel, he continued his musical studies with Professor Erwin Leuchter. In January 1971 he put architecture aside and devoted himself to music. During the following years he resumed musical studies with José Maranzano, and quite later he took up orchestral conducting with Carlos Calleja.
In March 1971 he became a member of Les Luthiers, replacing Marcos Mundstock as presenter as well as performer on several both formal and informal instruments. As a composer, his first work for the group was a jazz piece for informal instruments: Tristezas del Manuela (Manuela´s Blues). Upon Mundstock`s return in 1972, Acher was asked to stay as actor, composer, arranger and multi-instrumentist. He was the motor behind the group´s collective format, and in the use of amplification with a view to the new, larger venues in which they were eventually to play. Through his friend Alfredo Radoszynski, who at the time headed the legendary Trova recording label, Acher promoted the group´s recording activity as a means to reach larger audiences. Some of his works are: a cycle of jazz pieces with single-vowel titles (a joint idea with Carlos Núñez Cortés), Miss Lilly Higgins, Bob Gordon, Papa Garland, Pepper Clemens and Truthful Lulu; his folk pieces La yegua mía, Añoralgias and Epopeya de los quince jinetes; Teresa y el Oso (Theresa and the Bear), a symphonic poem for narrator and the informal-instruments ensemble, parodying Prokofiev´s Peter and the Wolf, and transcribed in 1976 for narrator, informal instruments and symphonic orchestra; Quartet Op. 44 for five players, and the Cantata de Don Rodrigo, in cooperation with Jorge Maronna and Carlos López Puccio. His most celebrated main roles are that of Don Rodrigo in the Cantata, the king in El rey enamorado (The lovesick king), and the “little brat” in La gallina dijo Eureka (Eureka, said the hen). The instruments designed and built by Acher include the “valve gom-horn”, the “gom-horn da testa” and the “kalephone”. He also collaborated with Núñez Cortés in the “glamocot” (which can be heard inTheresa and the Bear) and the “clamaneus”, which has never been introduced, and with Carlos Iraldi in designing Antenor, the musical robot in the 1979 show Muchas gracias de nada (Much ado with nothing at all). On top of his talents as composer, arranger and his remarkable ability at different instruments, such as clarinet, bass clarinet, French horn, trombone, piano, accordion, drums and other percussion instruments, plus half a dozen of assorted informal instruments, he was quite expert in approaching different genres and styles. Besides his activity with Les Luthiers, he composed the soundtrack for Carlos Jerusalinsky´s medium-length film Caja de sorpresas (Jack-in-the-box), based on a short story by Ray Bradbury, which received several awards at the 1976 Uncipar Festival, and had his String Sextet performed at the 1978 Contemporary Music Festival at Santiago, Chile, as well as Molloy, a symphonic poem for viola and orchestra, with soloist Marcela Magín and the Buenos Aires Philharmonic under maestro Pedro I. Calderón, in 1980. After his extensive stint with Les Luthiers, he quit the group for reasons that have remained unclear. Acher´s diplomatic explanation is that “Les Luthiers is a multiple marriage, and gentlemen do not ask spouses what went on in their marriage.”
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