Angelo "Angy" Palumbo was an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 musician

Musician

A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....

, composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 and music teacher, mainly active in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

.

As a musician and teacher

Palumbo was a specialist of various fret

Fret

A fret is a raised portion on the neck of a stringed instrument, that extends generally across the full width of the neck. On most modern western instruments, frets are metal strips inserted into the fingerboard...

ted instruments, and his advertisments in the trade journal B.M.G. shows that he taught guitar

Guitar

The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

 as well as banjo

Banjo

In the 1830s Sweeney became the first white man to play the banjo on stage. His version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth-string. There is no proof, however, that Sweeney invented either innovation. This new...

, mandolin

Mandolin

A mandolin is a musical instrument in the lute family . It descends from the mandore, a soprano member of the lute family. The mandolin soundboard comes in many shapes—but generally round or teardrop-shaped, sometimes with scrolls or other projections. A mandolin may have f-holes, or a single...

 and violin

Violin

The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....

 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

Radio

Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...

 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 appearad 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

British Library

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...

 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

A disability may be physical, cognitive, mental, sensory, emotional, developmental or some combination of these.Many people would rather be referred to as a person with a disability instead of handicapped...

, 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

Hackney

-Places:* London Borough of Hackney, formed in 1965** Metropolitan Borough of Hackney, formed in 1900 and abolished in 1965** Hackney Central** Hackney Central , a political division of the Council** Hackney Central railway station** Hackney College...

.

According to B.M.G. Angy Palumbo passed away 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.

External links

• The printed music for Palumbo's composition Petite Bolero