Until now the career of Elise Hall (1853–1924), the world's first female orchestral saxophonist and altruistic patroness of the arts, has been regarded as a twentieth-century affair. Between 1900 and 1920, she appeared in select performances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Orchestral Club, and Longy Club, and was heard on Parisian programs of La Société nationale de musique and Salon des musiciens français. Most famously, she was the sole financial benefactor of the Boston Orchestral Club and commissioned twenty-two works by prominent French composers (Debussy, d’Indy, Loeffler, Schmitt, and others), many of which she premiered. During this time, Hall also presented several self-produced concerts on both sides of the Atlantic and participated in countless private musicales. By all measures, hers was a monumental and enduring achievement, especially in view of the resistance that women of her generation encountered with regard to performing in public and, in her case, playing the saxophone. Although recognition was slow in coming, Elise Hall is now celebrated for her pioneering efforts.

Paradoxically, these twentieth-century triumphs in the East have long been regarded as having less than exceptional nineteenth-century antecedents out West. According to her friend Renée Longy, it was while in California in the mid-1890s that Hall suffered a bout of typhoid fever resulting in hearing loss. Her husband, Richard J. Hall, MD, is alleged to have prescribed a novel treatment: playing a wind instrument to stimulate hearing and prevent further impairment. This she did, but because Santa Barbara was a small remote city, finding a teacher was said to have been difficult; hence, according to Longy, lessons began with a village laborer who happened to have a saxophone. William Street, in his dissertation, mentioned that Elise Hall's musical involvement in Santa Barbara included an organization known as “The Amateurs.” Reports of these curious and unremarkable beginnings led historians to conclude that her time in California lacked noteworthy achievement. However, a thorough reinvestigation reveals that such an unflattering narrative is largely false. The truth is that Hall's unprecedented successes in Boston was a continuation of what she had begun eight years earlier and some three thousand miles away.

The Hall family moved from New York to Santa Barbara in late 1889, and Elise began saxophone lessons in 1891. Although dozens of newspaper accounts refer to her throughout the 1890s (including societal happenings, charitable events, and musical performances), none mention illness or hearing loss.