​A New Sonata for Solo Instrument & Piano...
Commemorating the transatlantic slave trade; forced labour in the New World;
 & the late US Congress Representative John Lewis (1940-2020) ~
Celebrating The American Civil Rights movement, The Return to Africa movement & Ghana's Year of Return (2019)
"C'est beau et émouvant à la fois". RM, France

"Beautiful composition…" CM (YouTube Comments)
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"Wow. That is beautiful.  The way the two instrumental parts respond to, and feed off each other, is lovely."  ​SN, (YouTube Comments)
"Congratulations! I look forward to hearing more from The Door of No Return."  SC, Essex
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"This is poignant and powerful... I thoroughly enjoyed listening… and also reading more about the inspiration and origins of the concept. Looking forward to watching the upcoming video releases." SL, Herts.
American ​​oboist Mekhi Gladden performs The Door of No Return from 26:40 onwards
To purchase the Oboe score of The Door of No Return from June Emerson Wind Music, please click on the image.
The Door of No Return
Dahomey
Betty's Hope
The Door of Return

for Solo Melody Instrument & Piano
Level:  Moderately Advanced (Dahomey & Betty's Hope)
Advanced (The Door of Return)
Duration: 13'00"

Scores available:
 C score for Oboe, in Eb minor 
Click on the image, to purchase
Bb score for Soprano Saxophone or Clarinet, in Eb minor
C score for Bassoon, in Eb minor - with a key change in the final part
C score for Cello, in D minor
Please send a message via the Contact Page
Dahomey features as the soundtrack in this tribute film to the late Congressman John Lewis, by American producer Jeff Bieber.  In the second video, accomplished soprano saxophonist Ashley Brand gives the British premiere, on 30 June 2022.  Daniel King Smith is the pianist.
​Up-and-coming 17-year-old American oboist Zachary Allen excels in his performance of The Door of Return, the final part of The Door of No Return.  On Track 3 - after a brief introduction - you can hear Zachary and Peter Dugan perform the piece.  ​Photo credit:  From the Top
Dahomey was inspired by the magnificent monument on the coast of Benin (formerly French Dahomey):  The Door of No Return (Ouidah). It charts the abduction of slaves by rival nations from elsewhere in the African continent; the march to the Slave Coast; the sometimes-lethal journey across the Atlantic; and forced labour on the island of Antigua.​
Betty’s Hope plantation in Antigua is now an open-air museum. The estate produced sugar from 1650 until the mid-20th century.  Its profits helped to fund the monumental Library at All Souls’ College, Oxford; and fed into the wealth of the City of London. The music is a requiem for all those who passed away as slave labourers:  and for Representative John Lewis, whose death in 2020 took him through his own personal Door of No Return. ​
The Door of Return explores the 21st-century return to Africa by members of the African diaspora, many of whom have recently settled in Ghana.  It is joyful music, but behind that joy lies interest in how this step will work out for them, on a long-term basis.   The end of the piece is more poignant in tone, commemorating John Lewis’s visit - with the Congressional Black Caucus - to the Doors at Cape Coast and Elmina Castles, Ghana, in 2019. 
Artistic Collaborators:  Jeff Bieber, Filmmaker & Julio Obscura, Photographer
Executive producer Jeff Bieber has won numerous awards including two national EMMYS, two George Foster Peabody awards, and a duPont-Columbia Award. Vice President of Content Development & Production for WETA Public Broadcasting Service in the USA, Jeff is responsible for content development, marketing, & project management of national Primetime programs and public media initiatives airing on PBS. Award-winning documentary series he has executive-produced include Avoiding Armageddon (2003) - an 8-hour series about weapons of mass destruction; America at a Crossroads (2007) - a 12-hour series on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; and multiple series about immigrant experience and transformation of the American identity. These programs include The Jewish Americans (2008); Latino Americans (2013); The Italian Americans  (2015); The Pilgrims (2015), & The Asian Americans in May 2020.  Bieber is also executive producer for Washington Week, the weekly primetime news and analysis program on PBS.

American photographer Julio Obscura was the Official Photographer for Speaker Pelosi in the US Congress from 2016-2020: hence he documented the Congressional Black Caucus' visit to Ghana in 2019 for the Year of Return. I am extremely grateful for his permission to use some of these photographs in this project; and you can see more of them - and read his report of the visit - here.  Julio - a  Fulbright Scholar - has recently studied for a master's degree in Digital Design at the Royal College of Art in London.
Image Credits
Photo credits: Wikimedia Commons; Shutterstock; Julio Obscura; Althea Talbot-Howard
Top: The Door of No Return, Ouidah, Benin (Dahomey)   Photo credit: JB Dodane Licence: Wikimedia Creative Commons
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ https://www.jbdodane.com/
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.