Elbi Olalla

Pianist and composer

Born and raised in Mendoza (Argentina), and recognised as one of the pioneering figures of the so-called 21st Century Tango, in 2001 she founded Altertango, a group with which she has recorded seven albums and which has contributed to making tango travel, with its particular style and imprint, to different parts of Europe and Latin America. Altertango is an indisputable reference point for contemporary tango, combining its origins in Mendoza, the musical wealth of its members, the atmosphere of creative freedom and daring, the energy of the performances, the obsession for the power of sound, with the nuance of an unconditional love for the genre and a determined militancy within the framework of tango in the 21st century.

In Mendoza, she has coordinated the work of Microtango, a collective of young tango artists, and between 2014 and 2017 she directed the Orquesta Sísmica Mercalli. She has recorded albums with Alejandro Guyot, Acorazado Potemkin and Jerónimo Flores, among others.

Since 2019, she has been living in Barcelona, where she has founded a centre for piano studies, the Barcelona Piano Estudio, and has formed duos with local singers, and is preparing her eighth album with Altertango with a grant from Argentina's Fondo Nacional de las Artes. Lately, she has collaborated in several projects with Argentinean musicians such as Josefina Rossenwaser, with whom she shared the cycle Tango en el Raval, or Sandra Reyes, also originally from Mendoza, with whom she has created Proyecto Tango.

Elbi Olalla's photo