Gesundheit!

That’s the name of a solo piano work by Jeremy Sawruk ’03. “When you see the score, you’ll understand,” says the composer.

The score looks—well, it looks like a sneeze.

Jeremy travels this week to Cambridge, England, to hear “Gesundheit” and another of his solo piano works, “Obfuscation,” performed in concert by the Anglia Contemporary and Experimental Music Society at Anglia Polytechnic University.

A composition student of Larry A. Lipkis, Jeremy works in a notation software called Sibelius, and his graphic scores come from “pushing the limits of what Sibelius can do,” he says.

As you can see, this music might baffle J. S. Bach. The few notes don’t sit on a staff, it’s not in 4/4 time, there are no sharps or flats. Instead the graphic indicators for direction, force, duration, and pitch areas (high, low, central, extreme) give the performer a great deal of interpretive freedom. “One performance can be radically different from the next,” Jeremy says.

Jeremy is from Allentown, and his major instrument is the trombone. His compositions include a string quartet and pieces for guitar duo, which were heard on a concert of works by student composers last April.

Just after he managed to find an affordable plane fare to England, Jeremy heard that a recording contract might be coming his way. It’s with Groove-a-licious, a subsidiary of Universal, the Los Angeles-based media conglomerate that includes Universal Studios.

“I do not even know the term of the contract, nor what genre or media,” he says. “It could be source music, it could be a full electronic album. I have merely been informed by one exec that it’s in the mail.”