At the time of his death in 1999, Donald Sur was in the process of writing another work, commissioned by the Cantata Singers; however, he died without completing it, leaving a deeply personal and important composition unfinished. The organization, in an effort to honor his memory and pay tribute to the important social themes in his final unfinished composition, attempted to find a composer to write a piece -- a type of spiritual companion -- that could be performed together with Slavery Documents.

T.J. Anderson was the organization's first choice. As a close personal friend of Donald Sur, admirer of his music, and a well-respected African American composer who centered his work in Boston for many years, Mr. Anderson brought to the project a deep and unique understanding of Donald Sur's musical and social objectives in Slavery Documents along with the larger issues of American slavery from the perspective of an African American composer. Mr. Anderson's piece, entitled Slavery Documents 2, is set to a text by Loren Schweninger, a professor in the History Department at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Drawing on his extensive research on antebellum court petitions, Mr. Schweninger developed a libretto that focuses on the areas of petitions to courts, bestiality of slavery, runaways, family life, and spirituality. Many of the original petitions are found in Mr. Schweninger's book, The Southern Debate Over Slavery, Volume I: Petitions to Southern Legislatures, 1778-1864.

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