Paolo Angeli

Paolo Angeli:

Sardinian musician Paolo Angeli’s professional career was spent deep in the avant garde, exploring post-rock, experimental opera, and more. His style was influenced heavily by that of guitarist Giovanni Scanu, who was a major proponent of the classic Sardinian canto a chitarra style. The combination of inputs inspired Angeli to create his own instrument: an 18-stringed hybrid of guitar, baritone, violoncello, and drums, adorned with hammers, pedals, and even propellers operating at various speeds. Working closely with craftsman Francesco Concas, Angeli created an instrument that enables an altogether new type of performance combining, referencing, and transcending free jazz, folk noise, and minimal pop.

"Paulo Angeli is a musical conjurer, an artist whose imaginative leaps defy gravity. A composer, ethnomusicologist and instrument builder who draws on his deep knowledge of traditional Sardinian music, he inhabits a timeless zone as a soil-rooted master and brash experimentalist. While suffused with Mediterranean cadences, Angeli’s original pieces encompass flamenco, jazz, Baroque, post-rock and new music. He plays a prepared Sardinian guitar of his own invention, a fantastical 18-string hybrid combining elements of guitar, cello and drums.

A feast for the eyes as well as the ears, Angeli in full flight is an astounding sight, as he bows, strikes, hammers, plucks and strums an instrument with strings going in all directions and foot-pedal-controlled motorized propellers. With sympathetic strings creating shimmering drones, he adjusts tunings on the fly to create exquisitely lapidary, orchestral music using electronic effects in real time (he eschews loopers, creating every sound in the moment).

It’s not surprising that this singular musician has improvised and collaborated with masters such as Pat Metheny, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, Zeena Parkins, and Phillip Greenlief. Angeli’s music may be unclassifiable, but it takes no expertise to recognize its strange and extravagant beauty"-SF Jazz

venue is wheelchair accessible.