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This talented musician continually bore the burden of her parent’s legacy. As the offspring of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the most famous British composers of the turn of the 20th century, Avril’s identity was shrouded in the lingering obscurity of the past.

The First Recording

In recent months, I contemplated these shadows as I prepared to record the world premiere recording of Avril’s 1936 piano concerto. Featuring intense musical themes, soulful lyricism, and bold rhythms, her composition will provide audiences fascinating insight into how the composer – a wartime composer born in 1903 – imagined her world as a female composer of color.

Past and Present

However about legacies. It can take a while to acclimate, to perceive forms as they truly exist, to tell reality from misinterpretation, and I was reluctant to confront Avril’s past for a while.

I earnestly desired her to be a reflection of her father. Partially, this was true. The pastoral English palettes of parental inspiration can be detected in numerous compositions, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only look at the titles of her family’s music to understand how he heard himself as not only a flag bearer of English Romanticism and also a representative of the African heritage.

It was here that Samuel and Avril seemed to diverge.

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

Samuel’s African Roots

During his studies at the prestigious music college, Samuel – the offspring of a Sierra Leonean father and a white English mother – began embracing his African roots. At the time the African American poet this literary figure arrived in England in 1897, the 21-year-old composer actively pursued him. He set Dunbar’s African Romances as a composition and the next year used the poet’s words for an opera, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral piece that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an global success, particularly among Black Americans who felt vicarious pride as white America assessed his work by the brilliance of his music instead of the his race.

Activism and Politics

Success failed to diminish his beliefs. At the turn of the century, he attended the pioneering African conference in the UK where he encountered the African American intellectual the renowned Du Bois and observed a series of speeches, such as the mistreatment of the Black community there. He remained an advocate throughout his life. He kept connections with early civil rights leaders like this intellectual and this leader, gave addresses on racial equality, and even talked about matters of race with the American leader during an invitation to the presidential residence in 1904. As for his music, Du Bois recalled, “he wrote his name so prominently as a creative artist that it will endure.” He died in 1912, aged 37. However, how would her father have reacted to his child’s choice to travel to this country in the that decade?

Conflict and Policy

“Daughter of Famous Composer expresses approval to apartheid system,” appeared as a heading in the African American magazine Jet magazine. The system “seems to me the right policy”, the composer stated Jet. When pushed to clarify, she qualified her remarks: she did not support with the system “in principle” and it “could be left to work itself out, overseen by well-meaning residents of diverse ethnicities”. Had Avril been more in tune to her father’s politics, or born in Jim Crow America, she may have reconsidered about the policy. But life had sheltered her.

Identity and Naivety

“I have a English document,” she said, “and the government agents did not inquire me about my background.” So, with her “fair” appearance (as Jet put it), she traveled within European circles, buoyed up by their acclaim for her renowned family member. She gave a talk about her parent’s compositions at the Cape Town university and led the national orchestra in Johannesburg, featuring the bold final section of her Piano Concerto, titled: “In remembrance of my Father.” Although a skilled pianist herself, she avoided playing as the featured artist in her piece. On the contrary, she consistently conducted as the conductor; and so the apartheid orchestra played under her baton.

The composer aspired, as she stated, she “might bring a change”. But by 1954, the situation collapsed. Once officials learned of her mixed background, she was forced to leave the country. Her UK document failed to safeguard her, the British high commissioner urged her to go or be jailed. She came home, deeply ashamed as the extent of her naivety dawned. “This experience was a difficult one,” she lamented. Compounding her embarrassment was the printing that year of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her unceremonious exit from that nation.

A Recurring Theme

While I reflected with these legacies, I felt a known narrative. The account of identifying as British until you’re not – that brings to mind troops of color who served for the British in the second world war and made it through but were not given their earned rewards. Including those from Windrush,