Angelo Palumbo (died 1960) was an Italian musician, composer and music teacher, mainly active in London.
As a musician and teacher
Palumbo was a specialist of various fretted instruments, and his advertisements in the trade journal B.M.G. shows that he taught guitar as well as banjo, mandolin 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 Pasquale 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 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, 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.
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. Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine
References
- See for example B.M.G. May 1958, page 212.
- Pasqual Troise on the Masters of Melody website. Angy Palumbo can be seen in the third photo on the page, sitting to the extreme right in the front row.
- Library of Congress: Catalog of copyright entries, Volume 35, Part 2.
- Angy Palumbo in Svensk filmdatabas (Swedish movie database) Archived 8 November 2014 at the Wayback Machine
- Track information from Chandos Records for Captain Corelli's Mandolin and the Latin Trilogy – Music from the Novels of Louis de Bernières (Chandos CHAN9780)
- Angy Palumbo in the catalogue of the British Library
- B.M.G. January 1961, page 133.
