WORLD PREMIERE
Wednesday 12 November 2025
Kathleen Carter Bell, Cor anglais
 Sarah Rushing, piano
WTAMU, Canyon, TX, USA
Live-stream: 1800 CT, Link TBA
BYZANTION III - δελφίνια (Dolphins)
for Cor anglais (English Horn) & Piano
Duration: 6'30" mins

​"Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood, 
Spirit after spirit! The smithies break the flood,
The golden smithies of the Emperor!...
​That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea."

W.B. Yeats (1865-1939): Byzantium (1932)
​
​Read Byzantium in full, by W.B. Yeats
Find out more about Byzantion: a cycle of works referencing the Byzantine Empire, poems by W.B. Yeats and historic Byzantine chant, composed for double-reed piano trio, in varying combinations. ​
About Byzantion  
The Cycle's Artistic Programme

Byzantion I - Hagia Sophia (EH, Bsn & Pf)
 Feature Page with Information & Videos 

Byzantion II - Through Space & Time  (Bsn & Pf)
Feature Page with Information & Videos 
Byzantion IV - Apokalypsis 
​(2026; EH, Bsn, Pf)
CONSORTIUM NOW OPEN
Byzantion I: Cor anglais, Bassoon & Piano
​Byzantion II: Bassoon & Piano
Picture
Byzantine Mosaic, Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy
Based in London, England, international prizewinning musician Althea Talbot-Howard is a classical composer who began her professional career in 1992 as a soloist and orchestral guest principal. In 2005, Gramophone Magazine called her “a superb oboist”.  A graduate of Girton College, Cambridge and the Royal Academy of Music; she won Third Prize in the Paris-Ville d'Avray International Oboe Competition in 2007; and was one of twelve equal prizewinners in the Ora Singers Christmas Gift Composition Competition in 2019. 
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Of Afro-British ancestry, she is a 12th-generation direct descendant of King Charles II, who formalized Britain’s involvement in the Atlantic slave trade; and therefore a 14th-generation descendant of King James I & VI, who commissioned the Authorized Version of the Bible.  Both anti-slavery and Christian themes feature strongly in her compositional output.