Angelo Palumbo (died 1960) was an Italian musician, composer and music teacher, mainly active in London.

As a musician and teacher

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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.[1] 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.[2]

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

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During his career Palumbo composed several numbers. His 6/8 March It's Up To You (lyrics: Arthur Beale) from 1940[3] 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.[4] 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.[5]

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:[6]

  • 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

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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.[7]

Main sources

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References

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