This overture was written in 1975 for a musical tour of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Humberside by KANON, a small orchestra conducted and co-founded by the composer, which specialized in the performance of twentieth-century music. The overture’s skittish main theme is turned upside down and used as a fugue subject for the middle section. At the climax, material from the introduction reappears which now also reveals its thematic kinship with the fugue subject. Various contrapuntal techniques are involved, but the overall effect is intended to be exuberant rather than dryly academic.