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Avril Coleridge-Taylor
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Avril Coleridge-Taylor
Gwendolen 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).
Gwendolen Avril Coleridge-Taylor was born in South Norwood, London, the daughter of composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and his wife Jessie Walmisley, who had met as students at the Royal College of Music. She had an older brother, Hiawatha.
On 19 April 1924, Coleridge-Taylor married Harold Dashwood, in the Croydon parish church. She initially composed and conducted using her first name and maiden surname. After their divorce she dropped her first name, thereafter going as Avril Coleridge-Taylor professionally. In the 1930s she was living at The Studio, 4A Hill Road in St John's Wood.
Coleridge-Taylor was invited on a tour of South Africa in 1952, during the period of apartheid, arriving on the inaugural flight of de Havilland's Comet passenger jet from Croydon to Johannesburg. Originally she was supportive of, or neutral to the South African apartheid system; she was taken as White and was mostly White-European in ancestry. When the South African government learned that her father was not White (being biracial, he would have been considered Coloured under its system), it denied her work as a conductor and composer.
In 1939, she moved to Buxted in East Sussex, where she had views over the South Downs. Coleridge-Taylor died in Seaford on the Sussex coast in late 1998. In 1998 a blue plaque was placed at the nursing home where she spent her last days, Stone's House, Crouch Lane, Seaford.
Coleridge-Taylor wrote her first composition, "Goodbye Butterfly", at the age of 12. Later, she won a scholarship for composition and piano at Trinity College of Music in 1915, where she was taught orchestration and composition by Gordon Jacob and Alec Rowley, and conducting by Henry Wood, Ernest Read and Albert Coates.
In 1933, she made her formal debut as a conductor at the Royal Albert Hall. She was the first female conductor of H.M. Royal Marines and a frequent guest conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra. In 1938, she was the first female conductor to conduct at the bandstand in London's Hyde Park. She was the founder and conductor of both the Coleridge-Taylor Symphony Orchestra and its accompanying musical society in 1941, intended to give employment to musicians during the depression. The orchestra at its peak consisted of more than 100 musicians made up of 70 professionals and 30 "specially selected" amateur string players, and a choir of 70 voices. She also founded the Malcolm Sargent Symphony Orchestra and the New World Singers.
In 1956, Coleridge-Taylor arranged and conducted the spirituals performed in a BBC radio version of Marc Connelly's 1930 play The Green Pastures. In 1957, she wrote her Ceremonial March for Ghana's independence day celebrations, also attended by Martin Luther King.
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Avril Coleridge-Taylor
Gwendolen 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).
Gwendolen Avril Coleridge-Taylor was born in South Norwood, London, the daughter of composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and his wife Jessie Walmisley, who had met as students at the Royal College of Music. She had an older brother, Hiawatha.
On 19 April 1924, Coleridge-Taylor married Harold Dashwood, in the Croydon parish church. She initially composed and conducted using her first name and maiden surname. After their divorce she dropped her first name, thereafter going as Avril Coleridge-Taylor professionally. In the 1930s she was living at The Studio, 4A Hill Road in St John's Wood.
Coleridge-Taylor was invited on a tour of South Africa in 1952, during the period of apartheid, arriving on the inaugural flight of de Havilland's Comet passenger jet from Croydon to Johannesburg. Originally she was supportive of, or neutral to the South African apartheid system; she was taken as White and was mostly White-European in ancestry. When the South African government learned that her father was not White (being biracial, he would have been considered Coloured under its system), it denied her work as a conductor and composer.
In 1939, she moved to Buxted in East Sussex, where she had views over the South Downs. Coleridge-Taylor died in Seaford on the Sussex coast in late 1998. In 1998 a blue plaque was placed at the nursing home where she spent her last days, Stone's House, Crouch Lane, Seaford.
Coleridge-Taylor wrote her first composition, "Goodbye Butterfly", at the age of 12. Later, she won a scholarship for composition and piano at Trinity College of Music in 1915, where she was taught orchestration and composition by Gordon Jacob and Alec Rowley, and conducting by Henry Wood, Ernest Read and Albert Coates.
In 1933, she made her formal debut as a conductor at the Royal Albert Hall. She was the first female conductor of H.M. Royal Marines and a frequent guest conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra. In 1938, she was the first female conductor to conduct at the bandstand in London's Hyde Park. She was the founder and conductor of both the Coleridge-Taylor Symphony Orchestra and its accompanying musical society in 1941, intended to give employment to musicians during the depression. The orchestra at its peak consisted of more than 100 musicians made up of 70 professionals and 30 "specially selected" amateur string players, and a choir of 70 voices. She also founded the Malcolm Sargent Symphony Orchestra and the New World Singers.
In 1956, Coleridge-Taylor arranged and conducted the spirituals performed in a BBC radio version of Marc Connelly's 1930 play The Green Pastures. In 1957, she wrote her Ceremonial March for Ghana's independence day celebrations, also attended by Martin Luther King.