Avril Coleridge-Taylor

Composer, pianist, and conductor Avril Coleridge-Taylor was the daughter of pioneering African-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. In her twenties, she had written an orchestral work, To April, and she conducted a performance of it in 1931. Coleridge-Taylor appeared as a conductor at the Royal Albert Hall in 1933, and in subsequent years, she became the first woman to conduct the Band of H.M. Royal Marines and appeared often as a guest conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. She composed a good deal of orchestral music and also songs, keyboard, and chamber music. By the time she died in 1998, her music was very rarely heard. In 2019, however, Britain's Chineke! Orchestra performed Sussex Landscape, and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra followed in 2020 with a performance of Wyndore (1937). The Chineke! Orchestra released an album of works by both Coleridge-Taylor and her father in 2022.