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Avril Coleridge-Taylor continually experienced the burden of her parent’s heritage. As the daughter of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the best-known British musicians of the 1900s, Avril’s reputation was shrouded in the deep shadows of the past.

A World Premiere

In recent months, I reflected on these memories as I got ready to produce the first-ever recording of the composer’s concerto for piano composed in 1936. Featuring impassioned harmonies, heartfelt tunes, and bold rhythms, this piece will grant audiences fascinating insight into how the composer – an artist in conflict born in 1903 – conceived of her reality as a woman of colour.

Past and Present

Yet about legacies. One needs patience to adapt, to perceive forms as they truly exist, to distinguish truth from distortion, and I was reluctant to confront her history for some time.

I earnestly desired Avril to be following in her father’s footsteps. To some extent, she was. The idyllic English tones of Samuel’s influence can be observed in many of her works, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to look at the names of her family’s music to realize how he viewed himself as both a flag bearer of UK romantic tradition as well as a advocate of the African diaspora.

This was where Samuel and Avril began to differ.

American society assessed the composer by the brilliance of his art as opposed to the colour of his skin.

Samuel’s African Roots

As a student at the prestigious music college, Samuel – the child of a Sierra Leonean father and a white English mother – began embracing his African roots. At the time the Black American writer the renowned Dunbar arrived in England in the late 19th century, the aspiring artist eagerly sought him out. He composed this literary work into music and the next year adapted his verses for a musical work, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral piece that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Drawing from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an worldwide sensation, notably for the Black community who felt shared pride as American society evaluated the composer by the quality of his music rather than the his background.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Success did not reduce Samuel’s politics. In 1900, he attended the initial Pan African gathering in England where he met the African American intellectual this influential figure and saw a range of talks, including on the subjugation of Black South Africans. He was a campaigner to his final days. He kept connections with trailblazers for equality including the scholar and the educator Washington, spoke publicly on racial equality, and even discussed issues of racism with the US President while visiting to the presidential residence in 1904. In terms of his art, Du Bois recalled, “he made his mark so high as a creative artist that it will endure.” He died in 1912, in his thirties. Yet how might Samuel have made of his offspring’s move to be in South Africa in the mid-20th century?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Offspring of Renowned Musician shows support to South African policy,” appeared as a heading in the African American magazine Jet magazine. The system “seems to me the right policy”, Avril told Jet. When pushed to clarify, she qualified her remarks: she was not in favor with this policy “in principle” and it “could be left to resolve itself, guided by well-meaning residents of all races”. Were the composer more in tune to her father’s politics, or raised in segregated America, she may have reconsidered about this system. However, existence had protected her.

Background and Inexperience

“I possess a British passport,” she said, “and the government agents did not inquire me about my race.” Thus, with her “light” complexion (according to the magazine), she moved within European circles, buoyed up by their praise for her late father. She presented about her parent’s compositions at the Cape Town university and led the broadcasting ensemble in the city, programming the heroic third movement of her Piano Concerto, titled: “In remembrance of my Father.” While a confident pianist personally, she never played as the featured artist in her piece. Rather, she always led as the leader; and so the apartheid orchestra followed her lead.

Avril hoped, as she stated, she “might bring a shift”. Yet in the mid-1950s, circumstances deteriorated. After authorities learned of her Black ancestry, she could no longer stay the country. Her citizenship didn’t protect her, the UK representative advised her to leave or be jailed. She returned to England, deeply ashamed as the magnitude of her naivety was realized. “The lesson was a hard one,” she lamented. Compounding her disgrace was the printing that year of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her forced leaving from the country.

A Common Narrative

Upon contemplating with these memories, I sensed a known narrative. The story of being British until it’s challenged – that brings to mind Black soldiers who defended the UK in the second world war and made it through but were refused rightful benefits. Including those from Windrush,