John’s Suggestion

Programme Notes

The few words in John’s Suggestion were scribbled in a notebook back in the late 1990s when a prominent composer gave me career advice. Back then, I didn’t have the heart to tell him that his suggestions were nothing new to me. Fast forward to 2012, when I was writing new music for my first band album, I Can See You—I saw those three phrases in the same notebook, and they immediately jumped out at me along with a melody. I applied them to this uniquely and varied orchestrated instrumental backdrop.

Compositionally, the piece is special to me because it was the first time I ever composed a piece that gradually gets faster from the very beginning to the very end. That being said, I didn’t want this change to be consciously noticed, so I stretched it out and made the piece longer. It was so much fun having such a precisely mapped-out click track in the recording session.

– Frank Horvat

Lyrics

John has made the suggestion
The suggestion is simple

I’ve made this suggestion
Many times before

John thinks that it’s…