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The guitarist, composer, ethnomusicologist, and instrument builder Paolo Angeli is associated with traditional Sardinian music.  Whatever you want to call it, nobody else is doing it quite like this. Paolo Angeli, the Sardinian sorcerer, manually magics beautiful, multi-layered music from his unique prepared guitar: a hybrid orchestra of an instrument with strings going in all directions, foot-pedal-controlled motorised propellers and hammers to create shimmering drones and bass-lines as he bows, strikes, plucks and strums while producing rhythmic atmospherics by treading on a plastic bag and adjusting tunings on the fly. Electronic effects are utilized but no loops.  With this singular instrument he improvises and composes unclassifiable music, suspended between traditional music of Sardinia, free jazz, flamenco, arabic suggestions, post-folk and pre-everything else, and came back in Sardinia with his voice in to the furrows of  tradition. Paolo Angeli strums, bows, and hammers the instrument, and adds traditional Sardinian vocalizing, in a stunning performance of music from his latests albums RADE, JAR’A, and 22.22 Free Radiohead. This one person and one instrument concert is a rarity.

He has collaborated with Pat Metheny - he uses Angeli's guitar in Orchestrion - Fred Frith, Hamid Drake, Iva Bittova, Butch Morris, Ned Rothemberg, Jon Rose, Antonello Salis, Evan Parker,  Takumi Fukushima, Louis Sclavis, Paolo Fresu, etc.

Than it follows a pearl in his production: the dualdisc Tibi (2010 DVD/CD), based on a photographic reportage of the prepared Sardinian guitar, realized by Nanni Angeli and sonorized live in ‘Solo’ with a music suite which includes new compositions and tracks taken from the preceding albums. The work can be defined as  the most important synthesis created by Paolo on the prepared Sardinian guitar, with a avant-garde mixing in 5.1 and with a relation to the image taking us back to the works of LM&I.

In 2013 Paolo produced his definitive meeting point balanced between traditional Sardinian music, free jazz, flamenco, Arabic nuances, and post-folk music: Sale Quanto Basta  (ReR), followed by S’Û (2015 ReR). Paolo spent two years touring around the world and produced Talea (2017 ReR), double album live, with recording from Australia, Brasil, US, Japan, Europe and Turchia’s concerts. Talea is the point of arrival of a research project and a kind of coexistence that has lasted 20 years, during which Angeli embraced the instrument as the natural offshoot of his musical ideas.

2018 opens with an amazing Solo at Carnegie Hall (New York) followed by another US/Canadian tour.

On 2019 Paolo produced a new album: 22:22 free Radiohead : we are in front of a one hour new composition, in which the band’s repertoire is re-writed with a sense of absolute freedom.

Since 2015 he plays with Iva Bittova (Sul Filo 2019) and in 2017  started a crossover duo with the Italian Indy musician Iosonouncane. Among his artistic collaborations, it is to be remembered the multimedia projects with Nanni Angeli (Tibi, Il passo dei Misteri), the duo with Hamid Drake (Uotha Nubop 2005, Deghe ReR 2014),  the avant-pop duo with Takumi Fukushima (Itsunomanika ReR 2011), the POG Trio – Piccola Orchestra Gagarin, with Sasha Agranov, cello, and Uriol Roca, drums – (Platos Combinados, WAJ/ALU 2011, Vostok 2016), the trio with Evan Parker and Ned Rottemberg (Free zone Appleby 2007). Since 2009 the collaboration with Antonello Salis  (Ma.Ri Auand 2003), and Drake took on the formula Trio, and in 2010 it was born the quartet that includes Gavino Murgia (Giornale di Bordo, Egea – Sard disc 2011). 

Among the remaining traces, Paolo continues to play with his travel companions Alberto Masala and Riccardo Pittau, the projects with Fred Frith (duo, trio, quartet, Tessitura). 

Paolo Angeli has a degree in Ethnomusicology at DAMS, Bologna. From 1997, he has been collaborating with ISRE at the constitution of 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’, accompanied by 4 CDs with recordings dated from 1930 to 1967. With Nanni Angeli, he is the artistic director of Isole che parlano, a international arts festival suspended between innovation and tradition taking place in Palau since 1996.

Paolo plays live more than 50 concerts for year in Europe, Usa, Canada, Russian, Brasil. 

He plays and records for Radio Rai Tre, Radio Rai due, BBC 3, NPR (Usa), Bayerisher Rundfunk, continuously performing in festival, galleries, theatres, and avant-jazz clubs.

He improvised and collaborated with Pat Metheny, Fred Frith, Jon Rose, Enkhjargal Dandarvaanchig, Antonello Salis, Hamid Drake, Evan Parker, Ned Rothemberg, Takumi Fukushima, Zeena Parkins, Otomo Yoshide, Nuno Rebelo, Lukas Simonis, Andy Ex, Verian Weston, Robert Dick, Lukas Ligeti, Phillip Greenlief, Shoko Hikage, Alex MacSween, Gino Robair, Tim Perkins, Frank Schulte, Carlo Actis Dato, Gianni Gebbia, Alberto Masala, Audrey Chen, Mike Evans, Neil Feather, Katt Ernandez, Dan Breen, Janet Fader, Camel Zekri. He has also played with the conduction of Elliot Sharp, Butch Morris, Giancarlo Schiaffini, Fred Frith.