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This talented musician constantly felt the burden of her family heritage. Being the child of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the prominent English composers of the 1900s, her name was shrouded in the long shadows of history.

A World Premiere

Not long ago, I sat with these shadows as I prepared to produce the inaugural album of Avril’s piano concerto from 1936. Boasting impassioned harmonies, soulful lyricism, and bold rhythms, this piece will offer audiences fascinating insight into how this artist – a wartime composer born in 1903 – imagined her existence as a woman of colour.

Past and Present

Yet about the past. It can take a while to acclimate, to recognize outlines as they really are, to separate fact from misinterpretation, and I felt hesitant to face Avril’s past for a period.

I earnestly desired Avril to be a reflection of her father. In some ways, this was true. The idyllic English tones of parental inspiration can be heard in several pieces, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only look at the names of her parent’s works to understand how he heard himself as not just a champion of UK romantic tradition as well as a advocate of the African diaspora.

At this point parent and child appeared to part ways.

The United States assessed the composer by the mastery of his music rather than the his ethnicity.

Samuel’s African Roots

During his studies at the prestigious music college, the composer – the son of a African father and a British mother – began embracing his African roots. Once the African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar visited the UK in that era, the 21-year-old composer eagerly sought him out. He set this literary work into music and the subsequent 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.

Based on the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an global success, especially with Black Americans who felt indirect honor as the majority judged Samuel by the quality of his music instead of the colour of his skin.

Activism and Politics

Fame did not reduce Samuel’s politics. During that period, he participated in the First Pan African Conference in London where he made the acquaintance of the prominent scholar the renowned Du Bois and witnessed a series of speeches, including on the mistreatment of African people in South Africa. He was a campaigner to his final days. He sustained relationships with pioneers of civil rights such as the scholar and Booker T Washington, spoke publicly on racial equality, and even engaged in dialogue on racial problems with President Theodore Roosevelt while visiting to the US capital in that year. In terms of his art, Du Bois recalled, “he wrote his name so prominently as a composer that it will endure.” He succumbed in 1912, aged 37. However, how would her father have reacted to his offspring’s move to work in this country in the mid-20th century?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Daughter of Famous Composer gives OK to South African policy,” ran a headline in the Black American publication Jet magazine. Apartheid “struck me as the correct approach”, she informed Jet. When asked to explain, she backtracked: she didn’t agree with the system “as a concept” and it “ought to be permitted to work itself out, guided by good-intentioned residents of diverse ethnicities”. If Avril had been more aligned to her parent’s beliefs, or from the US under segregation, she might have thought twice about this system. But life had sheltered her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I possess a UK passport,” she remarked, “and the officials failed to question me about my ethnicity.” So, with her “fair” skin (according to the magazine), she moved among the Europeans, lifted by their admiration for her deceased parent. She delivered a lecture about her parent’s compositions at the educational institution and conducted the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in the city, programming the inspiring part of her concerto, titled: “In memory of my Father.” While a skilled pianist personally, she never played as the lead performer in her concerto. Instead, she always led as the maestro; and so the orchestra of the era followed her lead.

The composer aspired, as she stated, she “could introduce a shift”. Yet in the mid-1950s, things fell apart. After authorities discovered her mixed background, she could no longer stay the country. Her citizenship offered no defense, the diplomatic official advised her to leave or be jailed. She returned to England, deeply ashamed as the magnitude of her innocence became clear. “The realization was a difficult one,” she stated. Adding to her humiliation was the printing that year of her controversial discussion, a year after her forced leaving from South Africa.

A Familiar Story

As I sat with these legacies, I sensed a familiar story. The account of holding UK citizenship until it’s revoked – which recalls African-descended soldiers who fought on behalf of the UK during the global conflict and lived only to be refused rightful benefits. And the Windrush generation,