Avril Coleridge-Taylor

Stephen Bourne has written an 800 word biography of Samuel’s daughter Avril Coleridge-Taylor (1903-1998) for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and it is now available to read in the online edition (www.oxforddnb.com).

A few years ago Stephen contributed a short profile about Avril to the Black and Asian Studies Association’s Newsletter (No. 46, November 2006, pp9-10). Here are some extracts, compiled by Stephen:

“Avril became one of the few women to break down barriers in the conservative world of classical music...Avril was only nine years old in 1912 when her father died, but it didn’t take her long to write and publish her first composition, Goodbye Butterfly, at the age of twelve. In that same year she won a Scholarship for Composition and Pianoforte to the Trinity College of Music. In 1933 she made her London debut as a conductor at the Royal Albert Hall and thereafter she conducted an orchestra and singers on several occasions at the Royal Albert Hall in her father’s most famous work: Hiawatha. Avril also conducted several major orchestras, including the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra. She was the first woman to conduct the band of H. H. Royal Marines. During her career, Avril wrote more than ninety compositions including large-scale orchestral works as well as songs, and keyboard and chamber music.”

“In 1956 Avril arranged and conducted the spirituals performed in a BBC radio version of the play The Green Pastures and the following year she wrote the Ceremonial March to celebrate Ghana’s independence.”

“In an attempt to find out more about Avril, I traced her son, Nigel Dashwood. He has been happy to share memories of his mother: “In the music world mother was discriminated against more as a coloured woman than as a woman. She was accused of making headway using her father’s name, which wasn’t true. That is why she chose to use the pseudonym Peter Riley...She felt keenly that she ought to take her place amongst the greatest. But the people in classical music profession disadvantaged her because of what she was.”