Pat DeRosa to be honored at Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame

The Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame celebrates the late Huntington and Montauk saxophone great Pat DeRosa on Saturday with a program of live music, a video presentation and a Q&A with his musician daughter and granddaughter.

The 2 p.m. event is free with regular paid admission to the Hall, on Main Street in Stony Brook.

Inducted into LIMEHOF in 2021, the Brooklyn-born and Huntington-raised DeRosa continued to perform from the Hamptons to Florida until just months before his death in March 2023 — having earned the Guinness Book of World Records designation as Oldest Professional Saxophone Player in 2018, just shy of 97 years old.

“He had an incredible career,” says LIMEHOF chairman Ernie Canadeo. “He played with many of the top jazz artists in the '40s, '50s, '60s and even later. And he was a great teacher in the Huntington school district.”

The event includes a 15-minute biographical film and a concert by DeRosa’s family — pianist and vocalist Patricia DeRosa Padden, his daughter; pianist, vocalist and flutist Nicole DeRosa Padden, his granddaughter; vocalist Bob Levy; and saxophonist Willie Scoppettone, playing the Selmer Mark VI that DeRosa used from age 12 until his death. LIMEHOF vice chairman Tom Needham will moderate a Q&A with the family.

The event also will hold a raffle for two prizes — a guitar and a saxophone plus picks, reeds and other accessories, donated by Farmingdale’s D'Addario & Company — to benefit a music scholarship sponsored by the DeRosa family and administered by the hall of fame.

Beginning in the 1940s, DeRosa played in big bands led by such headliners as Glenn Miller and Lionel Hampton. His own Pat DeRosa Trio played at the first inaugural ball of President Richard M. Nixon in 1969.

Also during that decade, DeRosa performed regularly with jazz legend John Coltrane, who spent his later years in Dix Hills. “We got along like brothers and I was very fortunate that John took me under his wing,” DeRosa recalled in 2017. “We played together for a year or two until he passed” in 1967.

In addition to his long performing career, DeRosa, who earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in music education from the Manhattan School of Music, spent 27 years as a music teacher at Huntington Elementary and South Huntington Memorial Junior High. In 2016, he was inducted into the South Huntington Hall of Fame.

He gave his final public performance on Oct. 12, 2023, jamming with the Bill Rignola Quartet at The Dunton Inn in East Patchogue. In June, the intersection of West 19th Street and 12th Avenue in Huntington Station, where his family home was located, was renamed Pat A. DeRosa Way.