Paolo Angeli

“Paolo Angeli has developed a significant new direction for the guitar with his innovations in design for our instrument. When I first heard him play his guitar, it was clear to me that the implications of what he and his instrument were offering were challenging and important. His solo concert was impressive not only for the unique sounds that he was manifesting, but also for the raw creative energy that it invoked.”

Pat Metheny

“…A sound explorer and artistic orchestrator, Paolo Angeli is known for playing a prepared Sardinian Guitar, a crossbreed instrument provided with additional strings which are bowed or plucked, with an added bridge and pedal operated hammers and pick ups. Visionary, multilayered and challenging, Angeli’s music is ambient, free improvisation, post-rock and much more. He weaves a unique aesthetic.”

Ciro De Rosa - Songlines

“Paolo Anegli’s rich sonic collage is quite the ride.The magic lies in the extraordinary architecture of his guitar, which incorporates foot pedals that trigger pianoforte-like hammers on the strings, motors that spur tiny bands against sympathetic strings causing high-pitched trills and an array of knobs that take the strings from their classical roots to rock distortion and back. It takes an equally extraordinary musician, however, to pull it all together, as Angeli does handsomely on this evocative and immersive ode to the landscapes, soundscapes and spirit of his native Sardinia”

Ian Patterson - Allaboutjazz

Born in 1970 in an extremely stimulating musical environment, Paolo Angeli grew up in Palau, a small port in northern Sardinia, which looks out on the 12 islands of the Maddalena archipelago, a rugged scenic area of turquoise lagoons, national parks and pristine beaches. Paolo started to play guitar when he was nine. The guitar and the voice of his father (his first mentor), the rock bands of the village, his experience at concerts in village squares, and carnival evenings, all pointed him in a direction that eschewed stylistic barriers in music. In 1989, he moved to Bologna and started to play with various contemporary music ensembles, practicing collective composition and improvisation, breaking down the borders between musical genres, and playing in the main European festivals of innovative music. In 1993, he met Giovanni Scanu, a legendary Sardinian guitar player who died at the age of 95. Giovanni taught him the forms and the components of the canto a chitarra gallurese e logudorese, old songs in the Sardinian dialects of Gallurese and Logudorese, traditionally accompanied by guitar.

From this clash between avant-garde and popular tradition came his Sardinian prepared-guitar: a unique instrument with 18 strings-a hybrid between baritone guitar, cello and drums, replete with hammers, pedals, and variable pitch propellers. Since 1997, he has played concerts with his modified guitar all over the world at some of the most important festivals and theaters of Europe, Japan, Australia, North and South America, Russia, and Africa, and has recorded more than 50 CDs. He has collaborated with Pat Metheny (who uses Angeli's guitar in Orchestrion), Fred Frith, Hamid Drake, Iva Bittova, Butch Morris, Ned Rothenberg, Jon Rose, Antonello Salis, Evan Parker, Takumi Fukushima, Louis Sclavis, and Paolo Fresu, among others.

Paolo Angeli has a degree in ethnomusicology and has digitized the Archivio Mario Cervo, the most important collection of Sardinian records and traditional music. As a researcher, he has published Canto in Re, a volume of historical analysis of the 'Canto a Chitarra' (ISRE 2005). With Nanni Angeli, he is the artistic director of Isole che parlano, an international arts festival suspended between innovation and tradition that has taken place in Palau since 1996.

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Paolo Angeli

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