Kate Loder

Kate Fanny Loder, later Lady Thompson, (21 August 1825 – 30 August 1904) was an English composer and pianist. Biography Ancestry Kate Loder was born on 21 August 1825, within Bath, Somerset where the Loder family were prominent musicians. Her father was the flautist George Loder. According to Grove, her mother was a piano teacher born Fanny Philpot, who was the sister of the pianist Lucy Anderson. However, genealogical research suggests Kate’s mother was Frances Elizabeth Mary Kirkham (1802–50), daughter of Thomas Bulman Kirkham (1778–1845) and Marianne Beville Moore (c.1781 – 1810). Kate was also the sister of conductor and composer George Loder, Royal Academy of Music Kate Loder studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Her performance of Mendelssohn’s G minor piano concerto at the Hanover-square Rooms on 27 May 1843, when she was aged 17, may have been her public debut. The following year, in 1844, aged just 18, she became the first female professor of harmony at the Royal Academy. Marriage On 16 December 1851 at St Marylebone Church, Westminster, she married the eminent surgeon Henry Thompson (Kt. 1867. Bt. 1899, ‘of Wimpole Street’). After her marriage she gradually gav