The guitarist, composer, ethnomusicologist, and instrument builder Paolo Angeli is associated with traditional Sardinian music and has co-organized an international arts festival in Palau since 1996. He has collaborated with Pat Metheny (who uses Angeli's guitar in Orchestrion), Fred Frith, Hamid Drake, Iva Bittova, Zeena Parkins, and Derek Gripper.

Paolo Angeli plays the prepared Sardinian guitar, a hybrid electro-acoustic instrument that looks like a guitar crossed with a cello, and has virtually orchestral capabilities. Angeli’s custom creation 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. Then there’s his array of effects, controlled by both his feet and hands. These custom modifications enable him to become a crazy-awesome one-man band, as he draws on Sardinian folk music, jazz, flamenco, Arabic suggestions, post-folk and contemporary classical music in his compositions. 

Paolo Angeli strums, bows, and hammers the instrument, and adds traditional Sardinian vocalizing, in a stunning performance of music from his latest, JAR’A, for this remote session, filmed on the island’s northern shore. - Caryn Havlik

Watch Paolo Angeli on the Sardinian shore: