Louis Moreau Gottschalk

American composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk was a virtuoso pianist and the first American composer to establish a reputation overseas. Born in New Orleans, Gottschalk studied in Paris and earned the praise of Chopin, garnering fame through such American-styled works as Bamboula (1845). In the United States, his pieces Le Banjo (1855) and The Dying Poet (1853) proved enormously popular. Gottschalk spent the period 1857-1861 in the West Indies, giving the first concerts of orchestral music there. He toured the United States for the Union cause from 1862 to 1865, but sailed to South America in 1865 and never returned, dying in Brazil.