Michael Repper and Curtis Stewart on Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

150 years after the birth of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, much of his prodigious output remains undiscovered and unplayed. Michael Repper and Curtis Stewart's new album, on Avie Records, takes a step towards putting that right whilst fully embracing the composer's African heritage. I spoke to them about the genesis of the project, its mission and the road to releasing what is also an important album for the National Philharmonic.

Why Coleridge-Taylor?

Michael: This project began with sheer love for Coleridge-Taylor's music and out of frustration that there wasn't more of it that existed in an accessible way to be able to perform it.

It’s the 150th anniversary of his birth in August 2025, and it’s so fortuitous that we can celebrate him through an album of his music that has never before been featured on a studio recording. That's the beauty of recording - you have the opportunity to share music you think deserves to be heard.

Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast is all a lot of people know of Coleridge-Taylor. How has that happened?

Michael: Coleridge-Taylor was internationally celebrated during his lifetime. He also lived in a period when music could easily fade from common knowledge if it wasn’t performed often. There weren’t mass-produced recordings or the internet making the sharing and preservation of music easy and permanent. There are many reasons why his music faded out, but you can't ignore the systemic issues of racism, like the effect of the industry generally weighing programming of music from certain communities over others.

When Tippett used Negro spirituals in A Child of Our Time, that should have been a perfect opportunity for the Negro spiritual work of Coleridge-Taylor to have been re-explored, or discovered.

Curtis: Certainly. I'm the Artistic Director of the American Composers Orchestra, and the number of amazing composers that exist at any given point of time is unfathomable. There might be a few composers who are very palatable for the time, but there are also many other composers that are excellent. So, it's to be expected that we will always be discovering new things, and that begs the question of canon, and what that does in terms of being almost a caricature of our musical human portrait.

We need to use recording to bring some level of permanency to discovering music that’s been left in the shadows.

Michael: Recording is fundamentally a different medium than performance. You can reach a worldwide audience that can’t gather in a concert hall. And one can only make so many recordings in your life. I appreciate that this project allows the opportunity to present music that deserves to be better-known. These works are incredibly special, as more people hear them, more people will perform them. 

In most situations, there is a commercial decision to publish performance resources, and charge for them. The focus here is very much on giving this music a life, isn't it?

Michael: In classical music, we have huge accessibility problems which manifest in dozens of ways, including access to the sheet music itself. Coleridge-Taylor’s music is in the public domain, and that's where we’ve kept it. The last thing we want is for anybody to say that they want to perform this music but they can’t afford the parts.. Anyone can download free complete performance-ready materials of this music using a QR code in the album liner notes or on my website.

The Ballade, that Curtis plays so well, is a fantastic piece. It should become part of the regular canon of pieces. Again, the mission is to share the music in a way that's both audible and tangible.

Curtis, was there anything different about the way in which you approached your interpretation of the Ballade, given that it hasn't been performed before?

Curtis: I love that space of finding an access point and creating a sound world for myself. My inspiration was thinking about Coleridge-Taylor the person, and how much strength, grace and musical joy he must have had to continue to put his music out there.

He was a violinist himself. Does that make his writing particularly playable?

Curtis: Yeah, all the melodic stuff is extremely playable. There are two or three fingerings that you could give to any one of those melodies that have a very specific character and quality. There are a couple of runs in the upper register that I did have to come up with some weird fingerings for, and at the same time you have to also find a lot of power with the bow.

Michael: We hope there are successive recordings and that other artists can add their perspectives. Similarly, we look forward to further projects continuing to shed light on Coleridge-Taylor’s largely unrecorded music.

The new spiritual arrangements are really striking and virtuosic as well.

Curtis: I'm trying to put myself through the ringer, I don't know why. He's taking these spirituals, and doing the ethnomusicologist work, exploring these 24 melodies from the African diaspora, and then putting those as arrangements into his piano pieces. Maud Powell, the great violinist from that time, arranged a version for violin and piano of 'Deep River'. I did an arrangement, based loosely on the Maud Powell, and then also based on the original Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. So, it's like an arrangement of an arrangement of an arrangement, plus I'm improvising on top of that.

How would you sum this project up?

 Michael: This was a huge endeavour and it was only possible thanks to the tireless effort of so many, including researchers, donors, musicologists, librarians, and of course the National Philharmonic, for which this is a debut recording. I’d like to call special attention to Lionel Harrison and Patrick Meadows, Coleridge-Taylor experts who were the first to uncover the Ballade and the Suite from the British Library and the Library of Congress. 

While I’ve mentioned the immediate teams involved in this project here, this album honours all those who have worked to share Coleridge-Taylor’s music and legacy throughout history.