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 national attention.

In this episode, Chamion and Laura retrace the young composer’s rail journey from London Paddington to Gloucester, where the town would have been festooned with bunting and bustling with thousands of visitors for the prestigious music festival. They find out about the composer’s studies at the Royal College of Music alongside Holst and Vaughan-Williams, learn about the wooden benches and draughty windows of a Victorian railway carriage and consider the ways audiences at Gloucester’s Shire Hall responded to Coleridge-Taylor’s mixed Black African and white background.

Episode 1 was recorded on location at Paddington, on the Great Western Railway train and in Gloucester. Many thanks to the contributors to this episode: Oliver Betts, David Francis, Nick Roberts, Gareth Jones, Vicky Abbott, Simon Carpenter, Chi-Chi Nwanoku CBE, Caroline Bressey, Doug Delaney and Christopher Goddard. And thank you to Great Western Railways’ Customer and Community Improvement Fund for generously supporting this series.  

Tracks of a Trailblazer is an audio project from The Mixed Museum. It was researched, written, produced and presented by Dr Chamion Caballero and Laura Smith. 

Audio production was by ⁠⁠Front Ear Podcasts⁠⁠.

Series artwork was by Kinga Markus.

Series art design was by Jim McCormick.

Original music was by ⁠⁠Rob Manning⁠⁠.

To access a full transcript of this episode and see archive imagery of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and the places he visited, head over to our interactive map at https://trailblazer.mixedmuseum.org.uk/