Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson was born June 14, 1932 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Prophetically, he was named after Samuel Coleridge Taylor, an Afro-British composer and conductor from the late 19th century. He moved to New York around the age of 11 to live with his mother, a piano teacher and church organist. He attended the High School of Music and Art where he began composing and conducting, graduating with a share of the LaGuardia Prize in music in 1949. After two years at New York University’s School of Education, he transferred to the Manhattan School of Music to study composition with Vittorio Giannini, Charles Mills and Earl Kim, and earned a Master’s Degree in 1953. His classmates there included later prominent jazz musicians such as Max Roach, Herbie Mann and Randy Weston.

Perkinson’s professional accomplishments span a remarkably wide range of fields, including classical music, jazz, popular music, dance, film soundtracks, scores for television, and education. In 1965 he co-founded the Symphony of the New World in New York; many of his classical compositions (influenced primarily by Hindemith, Barber and Bartok) were collected on a 2005 CD, . His jazz credits include a short stint playing piano in Max Roach’s Quartet, and work with Rahsaan Roland Kirk, David Sanborn, and Donald Byrd and the Blackbyrds. He straddled the jazz and dance worlds when he wrote a ballet for Alvin Ailey inspired by Charlie Parker, ; he was also Music Director for the Alvin Ailey Dance Company, Jerome Robbins’s American Theater Lab and the Dance Theater of Harlem. His film credits include the Martin Luther King documentary, , Sidney Poitier’s , , and . His television work included scores for and , and musical director for . His career in education began at Brooklyn College in 1959 and ended at Columbia College Chicago, where he directed the Center for Black Music Research and the New Black Music Repertory Ensemble until his death from cancer on March 9, 2004.

Perkinson’s career as an arranger in popular music was brief, but significant. His eclectic background equipped him well to contribute to the development of rhythm and blues from the slick pop singles of early Motown and the rawer soul of Stax/Volt Records to the more lush, fully orchestrated sounds of disco in the late 1970s. His work on Marvin Gaye’s and its companion, Leon Ware’s (called “the pre-eminent early disco concept albums” by the All Music Guide), puts him in the company of other arrangers of the period such as David Van de Pitte (on Gaye’s previous records and and theTemptations’), Johnny Allen and Dale Warren (on Isaac Hayes’s ), Riley Hampton and Johnny Pate (on Curtis Mayfield’s ), Thom Bell (with the O’Jays and other Philadelphia International Records artists) and Gene Page (with Motown and Barry White) who greatly expanded the level of orchestral sophistication of this music, allowing for records with dramatic, palpable atmosphere and sonic depth.

Sources:Jurek, Thom. Review of [Expanded Edition], by Marvin Gaye, All Music Guide. Available online at http://www.allmusic.com (accessed September 15, 2007). Lewis, Uncle Dave. Review of . All Music Guide. Available online at http://www.allmusic.com (accessed September 15, 2007). Martin, Douglas. “Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, Versatile Musician, Dies at 71,” New York Times, March 13, 2004. New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Video Gallery Cataloging Data for (video recording). Available online at http://www.nypl.org/research/sc/scl/MULTIMED/JAZZHIST/cpcat.htm (Accessed September 17, 2007). Torres, Richard. “Romantic Obsession.” Liner notes to Marvin Gaye, [Expanded Edition], Motown Records, B0000467-02. Weinger, Harry. “Arranged by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson.” Sidebar to liner notes for Marvin Gaye, [Expanded Edition], Motown Records, B0000467-02.