Life and Career
Gilmore was born in Ballygar, County Galway. He started his music career at age fifteen, and spent time in Canada with an English band. Already a fine cornet player, he settled in Boston, Massachusetts in 1848, becoming leader of the Suffolk, Boston Brigade, and Salem bands in swift succession. He also worked in the Boston music store of John P. Ordway and founed Ordway's Aeolians, a group of blackface minstrels. With the Salem Band, Gilmore performed at the 1857 inauguration of President James Buchanan.
In 1858 he founded "Gilmore's Band", and at the outset of war the band enlisted with the 24th Massachusetts Volunteers, accompanying General Burnside to North Carolina. After the temporary discharge of bands from the field, Governor Andrew of Massachusetts entrusted Gilmore with the task of re-organizing military music-making, and General Banks created him bandmaster general.
When peace resumed, Gilmore was asked to organize a celebration, which took place at New Orleans. That success emboldened him to undertake two major music festivals at Boston, the National Peace Jubilee in 1869 and the World's Peace Jubilee and International Musical Festival in 1872. These featured the finest singers and instrumentalists (including the only American appearance by waltz king Johann Strauss II) and cemented Gilmore's reputation as the leading musical figure of the age. Coliseums were erected for the occasions, holding sixty and one hundred and twenty thousand persons. Grateful Bostonians presented Gilmore with medals and cash, but in 1873 he moved to New York, as bandmaster of the 22nd Regiment. Gilmore took this band on acclaimed tours of Europe.
It was back on home soil, preparing an 1892 musical celebration of the quarter centenary of Christopher Columbus' voyage of discovery, that Gilmore collapsed and died at St. Louis. Gilmore is buried with his wife and daughter in Old Calvary Cemetery, Queens, New York.
Read more about this topic: Patrick Gilmore
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