I begin to dedicate myself to music at the age of 16 when I started playing the five-string banjo. I studied the plays of Earl Scruggs and Tony Trischka and as late as one year later I founded my first band with other bands following after. At that time they were pure bluegrass bands where we were mistakenly thought that the more tones we played in as short time as possible, the better.

Conventional problems of music bands (poor attendance, lack of approach, opinion disagreements) brought me to the idea of classical music and thus I started studying the classical guitar and also learned the music notes. But only much later did I understand that music might express much, much more.

I started studying ingenious compositions of the composers such as Mike Oldfield and John Vangelis. Both composers use all the colourful possibilies of musical instruments and in connection with the technique they reach illustrious results. I remember as if it were today, I was listening to Mike Oldfield´s Tubular Bells II. for the first time; beautiful links, sparkling colours, incredible forms, sound layers, tone modulation, and other attributes of this unprecedented genius. Tears were falling down on my cheeks and it was then when I decided that this was precisely the music I once wanted to make. I immersed myself into analyzing his compositions and tried to understand how such brilliant music is actually made.

There were other following analyses of his great albums like Songs, Voyager, Guitars, Tre Lunas, Tubular Bells III., Tubular Bells 2003, Light and Shadow, etc. As far as older compositions are concerned, I was fascinated by Lake, Tub I., Amarok, Discovery, etc.

Unfortunatelly, at that time music studios were very expensive and that is why I started running a business so that I could earn money for my own recording studio. I had to work very hard for years and learn how to do business. Fortunatelly, I was lucky to achieve that and my composer´s journey began. I worked for the radio, where I was making soundtracks, commercials, and recorded music for documentary films, and I was composing custom-made songs. In the meantime I was studying music systems, harddisk recorders, synthesizers, sequencers, and many other devices necessary for work in the studio. I also started playing the keyboard.

My first piece of music was formed at that time and for 15 years it was hidden in a drawer. The album title is Eridanus. and is dedicated as an honour to Mike Oldfield (in my opinion, the greatest music genius of all times). The album is inspired by Tubular Bells II. and today I can present it to you. The purpose of this album is to at least partially come closer to Mike. If I succeeded at least a bit, then I feel an inexpressible happiness. However the judgement I will leave up to you.


John Vojtovitch