Stepping from Darkness: Why Avril Coleridge-Taylor Merits to Be Listened To

This talented musician constantly experienced the weight of her parent’s reputation. As the daughter of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the prominent UK composers of the turn of the 20th century, the composer’s name was shrouded in the long shadows of the past.

The First Recording

In recent months, I reflected on these memories as I got ready to record the world premiere recording of her concerto for piano composed in 1936. With its impassioned harmonies, heartfelt tunes, and bold rhythms, this piece will provide music lovers valuable perspective into how she – a composer during war who entered the world in 1903 – envisioned her existence as a artist with mixed heritage.

Past and Present

But here’s the thing about shadows. It can take a while to acclimate, to see shapes as they truly exist, to tell reality from distortion, and I felt hesitant to address the composer’s background for a while.

I earnestly desired Avril to be her father’s daughter. To some extent, this was true. The idyllic English tones of her father’s impact can be detected in many of her works, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to look at the headings of her father’s compositions to understand how he heard himself as both a flag bearer of English Romanticism as well as a advocate of the African diaspora.

At this point Samuel and Avril appeared to part ways.

American society evaluated Samuel by the excellence of his music rather than the his ethnicity.

Parental Heritage

While he was studying at the Royal College of Music, her father – the child of a Sierra Leonean father and a British mother – started to lean into his African roots. At the time the poet of color this literary figure visited the UK in 1897, the aspiring artist actively pursued him. He composed this literary work as a composition and the subsequent year adapted his verses for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral piece that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an worldwide sensation, especially with Black Americans who felt vicarious pride as white America assessed his work by the excellence of his music as opposed to the his background.

Activism and Politics

Recognition failed to diminish his beliefs. In 1900, he attended the First Pan African Conference in the UK where he met the prominent scholar the renowned Du Bois and witnessed a range of talks, including on the mistreatment of the Black community there. He remained an advocate throughout his life. He sustained relationships with pioneers of civil rights including Du Bois and this leader, delivered his own speeches on racial equality, and even discussed racial problems with President Theodore Roosevelt on a trip to the presidential residence in that year. As for his music, reminisced Du Bois, “he made his mark so notably as a composer that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He died in that year, at 37 years old. Yet how might the composer have thought of his child’s choice to travel to South Africa in the that decade?

Conflict and Policy

“Daughter of Famous Composer expresses approval to South African policy,” ran a headline in the Black American publication Jet magazine. Apartheid “struck me as the correct approach”, she informed Jet. Upon further questioning, she backtracked: she did not support with this policy “fundamentally” and it “could be left to run its course, guided by good-intentioned South Africans of diverse ethnicities”. Were the composer more in tune to her father’s politics, or from segregated America, she may have reconsidered about this system. However, existence had shielded her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I possess a English document,” she remarked, “and the government agents did not inquire me about my race.” So, with her “fair” skin (as Jet put it), she floated within European circles, supported by their acclaim for her renowned family member. She presented about her father’s music at the Cape Town university and led the national orchestra in Johannesburg, programming the inspiring part of her concerto, titled: “In memory of my Father.” Even though a confident pianist personally, she did not perform as the featured artist in her concerto. Instead, she always led as the leader; and so the apartheid orchestra followed her lead.

The composer aspired, according to her, she “could introduce a shift”. Yet in the mid-1950s, things fell apart. After authorities discovered her Black ancestry, she could no longer stay the country. Her citizenship failed to safeguard her, the diplomatic official urged her to go or be jailed. She returned to England, deeply ashamed as the scale of her inexperience became clear. “This experience was a hard one,” she lamented. Adding to her disgrace was the printing that year of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her sudden departure from that nation.

A Familiar Story

As I sat with these shadows, I felt a known narrative. The account of being British until you’re not – which recalls Black soldiers who fought on behalf of the English during the global conflict and made it through but were refused rightful benefits. And the Windrush generation,