#4564, From Soundcheck, With Paolo Angeli

Guitarist, composer, ethnomusicologist, and instrument builder Paolo Angeli plays the prepared Sardinian guitar, a hybrid electro-acoustic instrument that looks like a guitar crossed with a cello, and can sometimes sound like an entire orchestra. Angeli’s custom build has been fitted cross-wise and lengthwise with additional strings: cello strings and drone strings, and has numerous other inventions attached to it, including hammers, pedals, and some propellers at variable speed. 

He has collaborated with Pat Metheny (who uses Angeli's guitar in Orchestrion), Fred Frith, Hamid Drake, Iva Bittova, Zeena Parkins, and Derek Gripper, to name just a few bold names. For this session, Angeli talks about the Spanish origins of the guitar in Sardinia (due to colonization), post-rock, Steve Reich, and explains Sardinian original singing as a combination of Sigur Rós, Arabic singing (again, colonization), and the vocalizing of Tuva, Tibet, and Mongolia. About one meter from the northern shore of the island of Sardinia, he strums, bows, and hammers his instrument, and does Sardinian vocalizing, in a stunning performance of music from his latest, JAR’A, for this remote session for the Soundcheck Podcast. - Caryn Havlik

ARTIST: Paolo Angeli
WORK: JAR'A Suite [1:11]
RECORDING: Recorded for the Soundcheck Podcast, Nov. 2021
SOURCE: This performance not commercially available. 
INFO: A version appears on Angeli's 2021 record, Jar'a

ARTIST: Paolo Angeli
WORK: JAR'A Suite [1:51]
RECORDING: Recorded for the Soundcheck Podcast, Nov. 2021
SOURCE: This performance not commercially available. 
INFO: A version appears on Angeli's 2021 record, Jar'a

ARTIST: Paolo Angeli
WORK: JAR'A Suite [16:22]
RECORDING: Recorded for the Soundcheck Podcast, Nov. 2021
SOURCE: This performance not commercially available. 
INFO: A version appears on Angeli's 2021 record, Jar'a

ARTIST: Paolo Angeli
WORK: JAR'A Suite [19:46]
RECORDING: Recorded for the Soundcheck Podcast, Nov. 2021
SOURCE: This performance not commercially available. 
INFO: A version appears on Angeli's 2021 record, Jar'a

ARTIST: Paolo Angeli
WORK: Groppo [1:02]
RECORDING: JAR'A
SOURCE/INFO: angelimanucheproductions.bandcamp.com/album/jara

Watch Paolo Angeli on the Sardinian shore: