Born in 1970, Paolo Angeli started to play guitar when he was 9. He grew up in Palau, an extremely stimulating musical environment. The guitar and the voice of his father, his first mentor, the autobus with the drums, the chicken, the melons, the ‘diroccati’ rock groups in an old carpentry, the experiences with concerts in the squares and carnival evenings, they all directed him towards a sailing without stylistic barriers in the world of music.

After he obtained his Nautical Diploma, in 1989 he moved to Bologna. It was during the 1990 university occupation that the Laboratorio di Musica & Immagine was born: a colourful ensemble of 14 musicians who, by unblocking the barriers among musical genres and by practising collective composition and improvisation, started becoming famous in the main European festivals of innovation music. On 1993, he was fulgurated by the encounter with Giovanni Scanu, the old guitar player from Sardinia, who died at the age of 95 and from whom he learnt the forms and the modules of the ‘canto a chitarra gallurese e logudorese’. From this ‘fighting meeting’ between extra-cultivated avant-garde and popular tradition came his Sardinian prepared-guitar: an orchestra-instrument with 18 strings, a hybrid between guitar, baritone, violoncello and drums, gifted with hammers, pedals, some propellers at variable speed. With this singular instrument, constructed by the craftsman Francesco Concas, Paolo elaborates, improvises and composes unclassifiable music, suspended between free jazz, folk noise and minimal pop.

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 Hernandez, Dan Breen, Janet Feder, Camel Zekri. He has also played with the conduction of Elliot Sharp, Butch Morris, Giancarlo Schiaffini, and Fred Frith.