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This talented musician always felt the burden of her father’s legacy. Being the child of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the best-known English musicians of the 1900s, Avril’s identity was shrouded in the deep shadows of the past.

A World Premiere

Not long ago, I sat with these shadows as I prepared to make the first-ever recording of Avril’s 1936 piano concerto. With its impassioned harmonies, heartfelt tunes, and confident beats, Avril’s work will provide audiences fascinating insight into how the composer – an artist in conflict born in 1903 – conceived of her existence as a woman of colour.

Shadows and Truth

However about the past. It requires time to adapt, to recognize outlines as they truly exist, to separate fact from misrepresentation, and I had been afraid to face the composer’s background for a while.

I deeply hoped the composer to be a reflection of her father. Partially, she was. The rustic British sounds of her father’s impact can be heard in several pieces, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to review the names of her father’s compositions to see how he viewed himself as not just a champion of English Romanticism and also a advocate of the Black diaspora.

It was here that father and daughter seemed to diverge.

White America judged Samuel by the excellence of his compositions instead of the colour of his skin.

Family Background

During his studies at the prestigious music college, the composer – the son of a Sierra Leonean father and a Caucasian parent – began embracing his heritage. At the time the African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar arrived in England in that era, the young musician actively pursued him. He adapted this literary work to music and the subsequent year adapted his verses for a stage piece, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral composition that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an global success, notably for the Black community who felt indirect honor as American society assessed his work by the excellence of his compositions rather than the his race.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Fame did not reduce his activism. In 1900, he participated in the First Pan African Conference in England where he made the acquaintance of the prominent scholar the renowned Du Bois 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 pioneers of civil rights including this intellectual and this leader, spoke publicly on equality for all, and even engaged in dialogue on matters of race with the American leader while visiting to the White House in 1904. In terms of his art, Du Bois recalled, “he wrote his name so notably as a musician that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He succumbed in that year, aged 37. Yet how might her father have thought of his offspring’s move to travel to this country in the mid-20th century?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Daughter of Famous Composer expresses approval to apartheid system,” declared a title in the community journal Jet magazine. The system “struck me as the appropriate course”, she informed Jet. When asked to explain, she backtracked: she was not in favor with this policy “as a concept” and it “could be left to run its course, directed by benevolent residents of every background”. Were the composer more in tune to her parent’s beliefs, or raised in the US under segregation, she may have reconsidered about the policy. But life had sheltered her.

Background and Inexperience

“I hold a UK passport,” she stated, “and the authorities did not inquire me about my ethnicity.” Thus, with her “fair” complexion (as Jet put it), she moved among the Europeans, lifted by their praise for her late father. She presented about her father’s music at the Cape Town university and led the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in that location, including the inspiring part of her Piano Concerto, named: “Dedicated to my Father.” Although a skilled pianist herself, she avoided playing as the soloist in her piece. On the contrary, she always led as the conductor; and so the orchestra of the era followed her lead.

The composer aspired, in her own words, she “might bring a change”. But by 1954, circumstances deteriorated. Once officials discovered her mixed background, she had to depart the country. Her UK document didn’t protect her, the UK representative advised her to leave or face arrest. She returned to England, deeply ashamed as the extent of her innocence was realized. “This experience was a difficult one,” she expressed. Compounding her humiliation was the release in 1955 of her controversial discussion, a year after her forced leaving from South Africa.

A Recurring Theme

As I sat with these shadows, I sensed a recurring theme. The narrative of being British until you’re not – that brings to mind African-descended soldiers who defended the English during the second world war and survived only to be denied their due compensation. And the Windrush generation,