as part of the Fabbrica Europa 2025 festival
An expanded Mediterranean takes shape in the meeting between Albanian cellist Redi Hasa, longtime collaborator of Ludovico Einaudi, and Sardinian musician and sound explorer Paolo Angeli.
Two music worlds open up to wonder. Angeli’s prepared Sardinian guitar, a one-of-a-kind instrument, engages in dialogue with Hasa’s cello, revealing new ways to tell the ancient stories of cultures born along the shores of the Mediterranean through a contemporary lens.
Born in Tirana in 1977 into a family of artists, Redi Hasa grew up surrounded by instruments and musical scores. His cello studies at the Conservatory were abruptly interrupted by the civil war that broke out in Albania in 1997. The following year, he managed to reach Puglia, where he was awarded a scholarship to attend the Tito Schipa Conservatory in Lecce.
In Italy, he began his career, which would take him to stages around the world, without ever forgetting his roots and homeland. He dedicated his first solo album, “The Stolen Cello” (2020) as a tribute to his migrant story. The title refers to his escape to Italy, during which he carried his most precious possession: a “stolen” cello, temporarily taken from the Tirana Academy to pass the entrance exam at the Conservatory in Lecce.
In his music, Hasa favors the blending of different genres, particularly merging the rigor of classical training with the immediacy of folk traditions, developing over the years a fluid and hybrid approach to sound.
Over a twenty-year career, he has performed with, among others, the Orchestra Popolare Italiana, King Naat Veliov, Kocani Orkestra, Ambrogio Sparagna, Mauro Pagani, Rita Marcotulli, and Pacifico.
Paolo Angeli is considered one of the most important innovators on the international music scene. Originally from Palau (at the northern tip of Sardinia), he grew up with his gaze turned toward the sea. Starting from the traditional instrument, thanks to a decade-long apprenticeship with master Giovanni Scanu and the influences of 20th-century avant-garde visionaries, he created the prepared Sardinian guitar, a true orchestra-instrument.
Since the mid-1990s, he has embraced influences from free jazz, folk noise, minimal pop, contemporary flamenco, Arabic music, and post-rock, reaching at a synthesis language that brings Sardinian traditional music into the contemporary world.
Improvisation is the driving force behind Paolo Angeli’s 30-year career, not only as a means of connecting and developing compositional structures but also as a practice of communication among musicians from diverse latitudes and musical cultures.
Since 2005, he lives in Spain and regularly tours the most prestigious festivals and theaters across all continents. He has improvised and collaborated with hundreds of musicians, including Pat Metheny , who has used a replica of Paolo Angeli’s Guitar since 2003, Fred Frith, Iva Bittová, Hamid Drake, Evan Parker, Antonello Salis, Jon Rose, Iosonouncane, and many others.
