If I would have to describe myself in one word, I would simply say – a musician. Others would probably call me an artist, composer, professor, bohemian, fisherman…

It was my mother who inspired me and made me love music, by singing traditional Serbian songs to me since my earliest childhood. At the age of seven I got my first official instrument, a guitar on sale with a drawn palm tree on the soundboard. With that same guitar I started the music school in Loznica. Later, even though it was practically worthless, we had to sell it in order to buy a better one. Back then we couldn’t afford two things of the same kind. Even today, I often think of that guitar. Since then I have never sold any instrument unless absolutely necessary.

Few years later, playing on different festivals and concerts I was noticed by professors from Belgrade. That was the reason why I obtained my further education there. I was barely fifteen years old when I arrived to the capital of Serbia. I had to figure out various ways to make for living, but I’ll say more about that some other time.

Exactly three and a half years later, the famous French guitarist Roland Dyens came to Belgrade. He played a great concert at « Kolarac » and next morning gave a master class for his young Serbian colleagues. I still perfectly remember the resonating force of absolute silence filling the full hall of the secondary music school « Mokranjac », when that same gentleman asked me, after hearing my three-minute long interpretation of the first movement of Ponce’s « Meridional Sonatina », to continue my studies in his class at the famous National Paris Conservatory.

That’s how it was. In fall of 2005, carrying three full suitcases, a backpack and a guitar I arrived to Paris. As soon as I got off the bus at a roundabout of Porte de La Villette, the biggest of the suitcases broke… The bad quality of Chinese fabric gave in under the load of my parents’ emotions put into one-third of a cube meter, framed with the first-class recycled plastic. All of my «just in case» little stuff dispersed everywhere. However, the Asian giant made up for the bad quality of its product. Almost at the same moment the Chinese taxi driver appeared to help me collect my modest belongings that rolled around the street. He drove me to my new home, Cité des arts, and two of us brought the luggage to reception. The man wanted to help and I could see in his eyes that he has been through similar situation at some point of his life. And so my parisian life began.

In the meantime, during my master studies I got the chance to study one semester in America’s famous Peabody Institute of the John Hopkins University as an exchange student. This is the first American academy with one of the best guitar departments in the US. That was a great experience for me with excellent professors and pedagogues – Mr. Julian Grey and Mr. Manuel Barrueco. Nevertheless, I figured out that I preferred the charm of the Old continent, so I returned back to Paris.

In 2010, five years after collecting the jars of jam and honey, woolen socks, guitar scores and old photos at a roundabout, I graduated from the famous Paris Conservatory.

Shortly after that I continued my studies of pedagogy and I passed the state exam for professors after which I obtained the first steady job and everything that goes with that.

However, in my heart there was always the same desire which I had since I was a little boy with a palm tree on the guitar. That was the desire to compose, desire to creatively express myself, desire to share, desire of fulfillment and freedom. The desire to reach a VASTITUDE.