Tracks of a Trailblazer

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor loved Wales, considering the Welsh people “the least prejudiced among white peoples”. In December 1902, he travelled to Morriston in Swansea with his pregnant wife Jessie and their young son Hiawatha to judge the local eisteddfod, or Welsh arts festival, and conduct Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast . In this episode, Chamion and Laura retrace Coleridge-Taylor’s train journey from L...

By 1902, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s The Song of Hiawatha cantata had become an international sensation. So it was a huge coup for the Newton Abbot Choral Society when the globally famous composer said yes to their invitation to conduct the choir in a performance of the first part, Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast . As far as we know, this was his only conducting appearance anywhere in Devon or Cornwall. In...

In 1898, at the age of just 23, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor became the youngest composer ever to be commissioned by the Three Choirs Festival. The event’s ambitious new director Herbert Brewer, who approached him partly at the suggestion of Edward Elgar, would not regret it. The resulting Ballade in A Minor had audiences and newspapers buzzing and thrust a recently graduated Coleridge-Taylor to nation...