Language English Died December 21, 1998 Role Conductor | Name Avril Coleridge-Taylor Nationality British Parents Samuel Coleridge-Taylor | |
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Education Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance Books The Heritage of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor | ||
Gwendolyn Avril Coleridge-Taylor (8 March 1903 – 21 December 1998) was an English pianist, conductor, and composer. She was the daughter of composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and his wife Jessie (née Walmisley).
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Biography
She was born in South Norwood, London, the daughter of composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and his wife Jessie Walmisley. They had met as students at the Royal College of Music. She had an older brother Hiawatha. Gwendolyn wrote her first composition, Goodbye Butterfly, at the age of twelve. Later, she won a scholarship for composition and piano at Trinity College of Music in 1915, where she was taught by Gordon Jacob and Alec Rowley.
In 1933, Coleridge-Taylor made her debut as a conductor at the Royal Albert Hall. She was the first female conductor of H.M.S. Royal Marines and a frequent guest conductor of the BBC Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra. She was the founder and conductor of both the Coleridge-Taylor Symphony Orchestra and its accompanying musical society in the 1940s, as well as the Malcolm Sargent Symphony Orchestra. Her compositions include large-scale orchestral works, as well as songs, keyboard, and chamber music.
In 1957, Coleridge-Taylor wrote the Ceremonial March to celebrate Ghana's independence. Her other well-regarded works include a Piano Concerto in F minor (Sussex Landscape, The Hills, To April, In Memoriam R.A.F.), Wyndore (Windover) for choir and orchestra, and Golden Wedding Ballet Suite for orchestra.
She dropped her first name after a divorce, thereafter going by Avril professionally. She had a tour of South Africa in 1952, during the period of apartheid. Originally she was supportive or neutral to the racial segregation; she was taken as white as she was at least three-quarters white in ancestry. When the government learned that she was one-quarter black (her paternal grandfather was a Creole from Sierra Leone), it would not allow her to work as a composer or conductor.
She also published compositions under the pseudonym Peter Riley.