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This talented musician continually bore the weight of her family legacy. As the daughter of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the prominent British musicians of the turn of the 20th century, Avril’s name was enveloped in the deep shadows of history.

The First Recording

Earlier this year, I sat with these shadows as I got ready to produce the world premiere recording of Avril’s piano concerto from 1936. Boasting emotional harmonies, expressive melodies, and valiant rhythms, Avril’s work will offer new listeners deep understanding into how the composer – a wartime composer originating from the early 1900s – conceived of her world as a female composer of color.

Legacy and Reality

But here’s the thing about shadows. One needs patience to acclimate, to recognize outlines as they really are, to distinguish truth from misrepresentation, and I felt hesitant to address her history for some time.

I had so wanted the composer to be her father’s daughter. To some extent, this was true. The idyllic English tones of Samuel’s influence can be observed in many of her works, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only look at the titles of her father’s compositions to realize how he identified as not just a champion of English Romanticism but a voice of the Black diaspora.

At this point parent and child appeared to part ways.

The United States assessed the composer by the brilliance of his compositions rather than the his ethnicity.

Parental Heritage

While he was studying at the Royal College of Music, her father – the offspring of a parent from Sierra Leone and a Caucasian parent – started to lean into his heritage. At the time the African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar visited the UK in that era, the young musician was keen to meet him. He adapted the poet’s African Romances to music and the next year used the poet’s words for an opera, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral work that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Drawing from the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an global success, notably for Black Americans who felt indirect honor as the majority judged Samuel by the excellence of his art instead of the his race.

Principles and Actions

Success did not temper his activism. In 1900, he participated in the pioneering African conference in England where he met the prominent scholar the renowned Du Bois and saw a range of talks, covering the subjugation of Black South Africans. He was an activist to his final days. He sustained relationships with pioneers of civil rights including Du Bois and this leader, delivered his own speeches on racial equality, and even engaged in dialogue on racial problems with President Theodore Roosevelt while visiting to the presidential residence in that year. Regarding his compositions, the scholar reflected, “he wrote his name so prominently as a musician that it will endure.” He succumbed in that year, at 37 years old. Yet how might her father have made of his daughter’s decision to travel to South Africa in the 1950s?

Issues and Stance

“Daughter of Famous Composer expresses approval to apartheid system,” ran a headline in the African American magazine Jet magazine. The system “struck me as the right policy”, the composer stated Jet. Upon further questioning, she revised her statement: she was not in favor with this policy “as a concept” and it “ought to be permitted to resolve itself, directed by good-intentioned South Africans of diverse ethnicities”. Had Avril been more attuned to her parent’s beliefs, or from the US under segregation, she might have thought twice about this system. Yet her life had shielded her.

Background and Inexperience

“I possess a English document,” she stated, “and the officials failed to question me about my ethnicity.” Therefore, with her “fair” skin (according to the magazine), she traveled within European circles, lifted by their praise for her deceased parent. She presented about her family’s work at the Cape Town university and directed the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in the city, programming the heroic third movement of her concerto, subtitled: “In remembrance of my Father.” Although a skilled pianist on her own, she never played as the soloist in her piece. Instead, she invariably directed as the leader; and so the orchestra of the era played under her baton.

She desired, according to her, she “could introduce a transformation”. But by 1954, the situation collapsed. When government agents became aware of her African heritage, she had to depart the nation. Her British passport failed to safeguard her, the diplomatic official recommended her departure or face arrest. She returned to England, feeling great shame as the magnitude of her naivety was realized. “The lesson was a difficult one,” she stated. Compounding her disgrace was the release in 1955 of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her sudden departure from that nation.

A Common Narrative

While I reflected with these memories, I felt a familiar story. The story of identifying as British until it’s revoked – which recalls African-descended soldiers who served for the UK during the second world war and survived only to be refused rightful benefits. And the Windrush generation,