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 primary education, elementary or secondary education, secondary music teachers, school or music conservatory ensemble directors. Music education is also a res ...
, 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 instrume ...
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 (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
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...
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 disability, cognitive, Developmental disability, dev ...
, 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