 For example, his piano piece, "The Melancholy of Departure" was inspired by the shadowy and irrational perspectives of a De Chirico painting.In 1992 Sawer was awarded the Fulbright-Chester-Schirmer-Scholarship and lived in the USA for a year.He won a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award in 1993, an Arts Foundation Fellowship in 1995 and a residence with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in 1996.