John Philip Sousa

<p>Born in Washington, D.C., on November 6, 1854, John Philip Sousa was the son of John Antonio Sousa, a trombonist in the United States Marine Band. Exhibiting extraordinary musical aptitude, young Sousa studied violin, piano, flute, and harmony under John Esputa. At age thirteen, when his father discovered he planned to run away to join a circus brass band, his father enlisted him as an apprentice musician in the U.S. Marine Band, where he served for seven formative years.</p><p>After working as a theatrical conductor in Philadelphia and New York, Sousa returned to Washington in 1880 as the seventeenth director of the U.S. Marine Band ("The President's Own"), serving under Presidents Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, and Harrison. Over twelve transformative years, he overhauled the band's instrumentation, repertoire, and performance standards, turning it into the premier military wind orchestra in the world. In 1888, he composed "Semper Fidelis," which became the official march of the United States Marine Corps.</p><p>In 1892, Sousa formed his own civilian concert organization, the Sousa Band. Between 1892 and 1931, the Sousa Band gave over 15,000 concerts across America and around the globe, including a historic world tour in 1910–1911. Composing 136 military and concert marches, his 1896 masterpiece "The Stars and Stripes Forever" was formally designated the National March of the United States by an act of Congress in 1987. A dedicated advocate for musical literacy and composer copyrights, Sousa also co-designed the marching brass instrument that bears his name: the sousaphone.</p>