prominent figure in 19th-century American music. He was a composer, the "Famous 22nd Regiment March" from 1874 is just one example. He held the first "Promenade Concert in America" in 1855, the forerunner to today's Boston Pops. He set up "Gilmore's Concert Garden", which became Madison Square Garden. He was the Musical Director of the Nation in effect, leading the festivities for the 1876 Centennial celebrations in Philadelphia and the dedication of the Statue of Liberty in 1886. In 1888 he started the tradition of seeing in the New Year in Times Square. Gilmore was the first American band leader to feature the saxophone. The French Garde Republicaine military band performed at the World Peace Jubilee and Gilmore was sufficiently impressed that in the following year he reorganized his band to include the instruments that the French band introduced to American ears. The new band included a soprano-alto-tenor-baritone saxophone section featuring Edward A. Lefebre (1834-1911) as soloist, which also performed as a quartet that became the archetype of the standard classical saxophone quartet. The promotion by Gilmore and Lefebre resulted in the first production of American saxophones and a shift of the center of the saxophone world from France to the United States around the turn of the century. In 1891, he played for some of Thomas Edison's first commercial recordings. Musically, he was the first arranger to set brass instruments against the reeds, which remains the basis for big band orchestration. His arrangements of contemporary classics did a great deal to familiarize the American people with the work of the great European musical masters. Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. See also Thomas Coates John Philip Sousa References External links Patrick Gilmore's entry in the Catholic Encyclopaedia Lyrics & Music: When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again Patrick S. Gilmore and The Boston Peace Jubilees Patrick Gilmore Collection, Special Collections in Performing Arts at the University of Maryland For the Record Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore, 1829-1892: Father of the American Concert Band. Highlights of 2004 exhibition, Boston College website Ireland's First Superstar, RTE Radio 1 documentary, 3 November 2018 1829 births 1892 deaths 19th-century American composers 19th-century classical composers 19th-century conductors (music) 19th-century Irish people American bandleaders American classical composers American male classical composers Union Army soldiers Burials at Calvary Cemetery (Queens) Classical musicians from Massachusetts Irish classical composers Irish emigrants to the United