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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor continually bore the burden of her parent’s legacy. As the offspring of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the best-known British musicians of the early 20th century, her name was shrouded in the deep shadows of the past.

A World Premiere

Earlier this year, I reflected on these shadows as I made arrangements to produce the world premiere recording of Avril’s concerto for piano composed in 1936. Boasting impassioned harmonies, expressive melodies, and valiant rhythms, this piece will provide audiences deep understanding into how the composer – an artist in conflict born in 1903 – imagined her world as a female composer of color.

Legacy and Reality

However about legacies. It can take a while to adjust, to perceive forms as they actually appear, to tell reality from misinterpretation, and I was reluctant to address her history for a while.

I had so wanted her to be her father’s daughter. In some ways, that held. The rustic British sounds of Samuel’s influence can be observed in numerous compositions, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to examine the headings of her parent’s works to realize how he identified as both a flag bearer of English Romanticism as well as a voice of the African heritage.

It was here that parent and child seemed to diverge.

American society judged Samuel by the mastery of his music instead of the his ethnicity.

Samuel’s African Roots

While he was studying at the prestigious music college, Samuel – the child of a African father and a British mother – started to lean into his heritage. Once the Black American writer the renowned Dunbar came to London in 1897, the aspiring artist eagerly sought him out. He adapted the poet’s African Romances into music and the next year adapted his verses for an opera, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral work that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an global success, notably for African Americans who felt indirect honor as American society evaluated the composer by the brilliance of his art instead of the his background.

Activism and Politics

Recognition did not temper his activism. During that period, he participated in the initial Pan African gathering in London where he met the prominent scholar WEB Du Bois and saw a variety of discussions, including on the oppression of the Black community there. He was an activist to his final days. He sustained relationships with pioneers of civil rights such as Du Bois and Booker T Washington, delivered his own speeches on ending discrimination, and even engaged in dialogue on issues of racism with the American leader while visiting to the White House in the early 1900s. In terms of his art, Du Bois recalled, “he wrote his name so prominently as a musician that it will long be remembered.” He succumbed in that year, at 37 years old. But what would the composer have made of his daughter’s decision to work in South Africa in the mid-20th century?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Daughter of Famous Composer shows support to South African policy,” appeared as a heading in the community journal Jet magazine. This policy “struck me as the correct approach”, she informed Jet. When asked to explain, she backtracked: she was not in favor with the system “in principle” and it “ought to be permitted to work itself out, overseen by well-meaning residents of every background”. If Avril had been more attuned to her parent’s beliefs, or born in the US under segregation, she might have thought twice about apartheid. However, existence had shielded her.

Background and Inexperience

“I hold a English document,” she stated, “and the government agents failed to question me about my race.” Thus, with her “fair” skin (as described), she traveled alongside white society, lifted by their admiration for her late father. She delivered a lecture about her father’s music at the University of Cape Town and led the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in Johannesburg, featuring the heroic third movement of her composition, named: “Dedicated to my Father.” While a accomplished player on her own, she avoided playing as the soloist in her concerto. Rather, she always led as the leader; and so the apartheid orchestra followed her lead.

She desired, as she stated, she “could introduce a transformation”. However, by that year, the situation collapsed. After authorities became aware of her mixed background, she could no longer stay the nation. Her citizenship failed to safeguard her, the British high commissioner advised her to leave or be jailed. She returned to England, deeply ashamed as the scale of her naivety dawned. “The realization was a painful one,” she lamented. Adding to her embarrassment was the release in 1955 of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her unceremonious exit from that nation.

A Recurring Theme

As I sat with these legacies, I perceived a familiar story. The story of being British until it’s challenged – which recalls Black soldiers who fought on behalf of the English during the World War II and made it through but were denied their due compensation. Including those from Windrush,