Waltham Philharmonic’s season opens Sunday with works by Coleridge-Taylor and Dvořák

The Waltham Philharmonic Orchestra opens its 2025-26 season on Sunday with a concert celebrating the 150th anniversary of composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s birth.

This event marks the orchestra’s first concert since May. The concert’s repertoire will include two Coleridge-Taylor pieces, “Idyll” and “Violin Concerto,” as well as composer Antonín Dvořák’s “Symphony No. 8.”

Coleridge-Taylor is a Black British composer, conductor and virtuoso who is known as an underappreciated artist in the classical music world. The composer’s choral trilogy, Song of Hiawatha, composed in 1898–1900, was well known and widely performed in his day, but his works are relatively unknown today. 

The orchestra’s Music Director Michael Korn said Coleridge-Taylor’s style of composition produced “exceptionally beautiful music” that is rarely performed. 

“On the other hand, he’s an extremely original composer,” Korn said. “You can always hear the influence of Black music in his compositions.”

Korn said one notable thing about Coleridge-Taylor is that the composer’s music weaves West African and European romantic styles together. He said Coleridge-Taylor’s obscurity can be partly attributed to the racial discrimination and biases that many believe still exist in the classical music world.

“I do think that [Coleridge-Taylor] became marginalized because, in general, for Black composers, it was much harder to make it … in the classical music realm,” Korn said.

In recent years, Coleridge-Taylor has been rediscovered. His music has been performed recently by the Minnesota Orchestra and the London Mozart Players, to name a few. He was also profiled in The New York Times.

The concert is Sunday from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Waltham Government Center, located at 119 School St. Tickets are $29 for adults. Children younger than 17 will be admitted free of charge. For more information, see the Waltham Philharmonic Orchestra’s website.

This story was written in collaboration with the Boston University local journalism program.