Fugue

Upon a visit to Iceland, the pianist Jon Sigurdsson TRICKED me into eating sheep's head. "And this is lamb," he said, innocuously.

It wasn't until later that I learned, from my composer-friend Wynn-Anne Rossi, who was also at the dinner, that it was not just lamb but sheep's head! No crime as heinous as that should go unavenged, so when Jon later commissioned me to write him a piano piece and we agreed on a fugue, the opportunity presented itself: I used soggetto cavato technique and generated the first notes of the fugue theme, E E E A, from the vowels in "sheep's head." Jon later recorded the Fugue for Polarfonia Classics.

Jon Sigurdsson, piano