Growing up in Italy, Gregorio Paone, an accomplished clarinet player, thought he was the only musician in his family.

When he came across an old photo of a relative in a band, his father told him it was a relative who moved to the United States from Italy. Paone’s father helped him trace the family line to somebody named James V. Colonna.

A quick Facebook search by Paone yielded a Jim Colonna who was a music professor in Utah at the time, and Paone sent Colonna a message.

“I was on Facebook and I got a message from somebody that I didn’t recognize,” Colonna said. “At first, I ignored it. But later, I went to my father, and I said, ‘Hey, I got this message from this guy that’s claiming we’re related.’ He’s in Italy, so it’s very possible. And then my dad laughed, and he said, ‘Oh yes, you are related.’”

Paone is a doctoral student and teaching assistant at James Madison University, working toward his Doctorate of Musical Arts in Clarinet Performance, Pedagogy and Literature. Paone, who was already accomplished when he came to JMU, gained recognition first in Italy, winning the Medici International Music Competition for the category of professional clarinetist. Then, after connecting with his relative, decided to come to James Madison University to begin his career as a doctoral student in hopes of becoming a professor or performer in the U.S.

Paone, who grew up in the southern Italian town of Bernalda, said he started playing the clarinet at age 10, when his school sponsored him to play an instrument and he chose the clarinet.

“I really like the sound, especially among all the registers,” Paone said. “It can melt, really with, for example, the surrounding, the environment in which you’re set. For example, if you’re in an orchestra, it melts with the other instruments. Or even if you’re playing solo, it melts like with the environmental sounds, like in the room or the noises of the people. We are supposed to be silent but absolute silence doesn’t exist.”

Paone went on to earn three master’s degrees in Italy, one in musicology from the University of Rome, the second in clarinet performance from Conservatorio Santa Cecilia in Rome, and the third in composition and conducting, from Conservatorio Gesauldo de Venosa in Potenza.

He also performed in a clarinet and accordion duo that performed on Italian national radio, RAI, and for former Italian minister of education, Luigi Berlinguer.

After Paone connected virtually with Colonna in 2015, the two got to meet in Northern Italy in 2017, when Colonna traveled there for a biking trip. They shared their cultures and then the two began to keep in touch, sending Christmas cards and birthday cards, while Paone sent Colonna videos of his clarinet performances.

“He is very naturally talented. Technically, he has a lot of skill,” Colonna said. “Like when you hear him play, he can do a lot of calisthenics, there’s lots of stuff he can do. Even though the he can be flashy and do all these fancy things, there’s an intent his music-making. He’s so in touch with every piece that he plays that you can tell it’s part of him to be expressing through the music.”

Paone decided eventually that he wanted to come to the United States to study music further and begin his career as a performer and academic. Colonna advised Paone on the differences between the East Coast and the West Coast and the different opportunities there would be.

“I mean, my whole family, we’re all musicians,” Colonna said. “My dad was my high school band director. It’s funny because the perception of an American musician of European musician has changed. It used to be that we all thought European musicians were better. But in about the 90’s that all started changing [to thinking Europeans] never move ahead. Gregorio is not that.”

James V. Colonna, Jim Colonna’s grandfather, is well known in Kittanning, Penn., for pioneering music education in that part of the state. He’s also best known for having written a march, called “America Forever,” on the night Pearl Harbor was bombed.

“That’s actually where the cutoff came. We didn’t talk to anyone in Italy after that point because they had to stop writing,” Jim Colonna said. “They learned English; they never spoke Italian in the home at all. They truly Americanized. When Pearl Harbor was bombed, my grandfather was truly disturbed by this and he wrote a march that night. He stayed up all night, he had a mandolin and he plucked out ‘America Forever.’”

Paone said he decided to apply to JMU because he thought it had a good program and it was in a part of the country that appealed to him.

“I really like this area. I was looking all these pictures of this area. So, I did a thing. I went to do a trip [to the Valley.] So I applied for university [at JMU] and Shenandoah University,” he said. “I fall in love, because it’s similar, the landscape[s] are similar to what you find in Italy. It’s colder [here]. In the summer it’s basically the same, in the winter it’s colder. Here, also outside Harrisonburg, all the countryside is really similar to Italian countryside. Also, the caverns, the caves. So I said, ‘I want to go there.’ It’s not even that far from [Colonna]. I just take my car, I drive three hours and I’m there. But it’s not so close that he can bother me. It’s a perfect distance.”

He is studying under Šarūnas Jankauskas, associate professor of clarinet in JMU’s School of Music and serving as a teaching assistant. Jankauskas said Paone provides a good example to other students of clarinet.

“It’s a great privilege to have him as a student,” Jankauskas said. “I’m honored that he chose to study here because he’s already very accomplished. He’s very responsible, organized and hardworking. The School of Music has been building its name for the past 10-15 years and its reputation has been growing so we’re happy about that.”

Paone recently performed in an ensemble at Messiah University, where Colonna is currently director of bands. Paone performed “Blue Midnight,” a new composition of Colonna’s. Today, Paone will be performing with the Waynesboro Symphony Orchestra, filling in for another clarinetist. On Tuesday, Paone will perform at the Forbes center with JMU Symphony Orchestra. On Oct. 17, Paone will have his first doctoral recital at JMU, and will perform with Jeremiah Padilla on piano. Oct. 22, Paone will perform again with the Waynesboro Symphony Orchestra at the Paramount Theater in Charlottesville.

Colonna said he’s proud that he’s the first in his family to reconnect and he said a love of music is something that stayed the same even when the family was separated for decades.

“It was pretty amazing,” Colonna said. “They were happy and I was happy. I got to torture them with my bad Italian. It was really neat because I would say to people, ‘I am the first Colonna to speak with the family since World War II.’ I wanted to make a good impression. They taught me a lot while I was there.”