Afro-British composer and conductor, who today is almost completely forgotten. At the turn of the twentieth century Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was one of Britain's most outstanding and celebrated composers. He was born on August 15, 1875, in the London district of Holborn where he grew up. Taylor's mother was an English woman and his father was a native of Sierra Leone. He later took up the study of the violin and piano. Taylor excelled at the violin but later changed and went on to study composition at London's Royal College of Music. After his graduation, he later lived for a period of time in America to try and escape from the prejudice he faced. After returning back to England, Taylor taught music at Trinity College in London and at the Rochester Choral Society. Taylor rose to prominence in 1898 at age 23 on the strength of two of his many works throughout his career, Ballade in A Minor, and his most famous work, a musical called Hiawatha's Wedding Feast. This piece of music was described as one of the most remarkable events in English musical history. On December 30, 1899, Taylor married pianist and classmate Jessie Walmisley. He was later appointed professor at the Crystal Palace School of Music and Art and also conducted the Croydon Conservatory Orchestra and the Bournemouth Symphony. Throughout his career Taylor was also actively involved in promoting the cause of black people worldwide. He frequently travelled to America where he held workshops for black musicians and composers, visiting in 1904, 1906, and 1910, and was even received by President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1901, the Coleridge-Taylor Society was founded in Washington, D. C., specifically to study and perform his music. However Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's rise to prominence was to be short-lived. He died at the age of 37 in Croydon, England, in September of 1912 from pneumonia complicated by exhaustion from overwork. Today there has been a resurgence of interest in the works of this great and interesting man who left behind a large and valued body of music.