Angelo "Angy" Palumbo (died 1960) was an Italian musician, composer and

music teacher Music education is a field of practice in which educators are trained for careers as elementary or secondary music teachers, school or music conservatory ensemble directors. Music education is also a research area in which scholars do original ...

, mainly active in London.

As a musician and teacher

Palumbo was a specialist of various

fret A fret is any of the thin strips of material, usually metal wire, inserted laterally at specific positions along the neck or fretboard of a stringed instrument. Frets usually extend across the full width of the neck. On some historical instru ...

ted instruments, and his advertisements in the trade journal ''B.M.G.'' shows that he taught guitar as well as

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...

mandolin A mandolin ( it, mandolino ; literally "small mandola") is a stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally plucked with a pick. It most commonly has four courses of doubled strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of 8 ...

and violin playing. He himself also played several of these instruments as a member of "Troise and his Mandoliers", a band led by fellow Italian immigrant

Pasqual Troise Pasqual is the Catalan equivalent of the Spanish given name Pascual, and a Venetian variant of Italian given name Pasquale. Pasqual is also a surname found in Spain (especially among the inhabitants of Catalan-speaking areas, including Andorran ...

(1895–1957). This band recorded frequently and also made regular radio appearances. British-American banjoist John A. Sloan (born 1923) was one of Palumbo's pupils as a youngster and has witnessed that Palumbo was an excellent but also very temperamental musician.

As composer

During his career Palumbo composed several numbers. His 6/8 March ''It's Up To You'' (lyrics: Arthur Beale) from 1940 became familiar to Swedish audiences by being used in the soundtracks for two of the popular films about private eye Hillman in 1958 and 1959. In more recent years his ''Petite Bolero for Mandolin & Guitar'' has appeared on the CD ''Captain Corelli's Mandolin and the Latin Trilogy – Music from the Novels of Louis de Bernières''. In addition to the numbers listed above John A. Sloane has also mentioned a composition called ''Hillderino'', and the

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lists the following additional works by Palumbo: * ''Take It Easy'' (1939) * ''Segoviana'' (1939) * ''Penelope'' (1965) * ''Marcietta Espagnol'' (1965) * ''Party Waltz'' (1966) * ''Lazy Moments'' (1967) * ''Carminetta'' (1967) The five titles from the 1960s are all listed as "plectrum guitar solos".

Life and death

According to John A. Sloan, Palumbo had a physical

disability Disability is the experience of any condition that makes it more difficult for a person to do certain activities or have equitable access within a given society. Disabilities may be cognitive, developmental, intellectual, mental, physical, s ...

, one of his legs being several centimeters shorter than the other. Sloan's recollection was also that Palumbo was in his mid-fifties in the middle of the 1930s, that he had a wife and a daughter and that he was a cousin of Pasqual Troise. His lessons were given in Navarino Road in Hackney. According to ''B.M.G.'' Angy Palumbo died in October 1960.''B.M.G.'' January 1961, page 133.

Main sources

Sven Bjerstedt: "Angy Palumbo – The pen name that was real" in ''B.M.G.'' (winter issue 2009)

Emma Bartholomew: "Searching for memories of the man with the mandolin" in ''Hackney Gazette'' November 19, page 24.

References

External links

The printed music for Palumbo's composition ''Petite Bolero''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Palumbo, Angy Italian composers Italian male composers British composers Italian mandolinists Banjoists Year of birth missing 1960 deaths Italian emigrants to the United Kingdom