MILENKOVIĆ'S LIFE STORY: 'I've been a soldier of the violin since age 8!' He reveals which folk singers he likes to kick back to

I was born on 25 January 1977 in Belgrade. My father Zoran was a violin teacher, and my mother Lidija Kajnaco a pianist. I'm one-quarter Italian – my maternal grandfather Armando was an Italian from Rovinj.

I was considered a child prodigy, and it may seem like I'd missed out on quite a lot. While my peers were playing, I had to practice for an hour and a half to two hours. It isn't much, but when you combine it with school and homework, it really is. On the other hand, I went to a perfectly ordinary school, and I absolutely had all the experiences that children have. We hung around and had fun. This one time, we went to a friend's house in Zemun, near the river. I had just returned from Panama with a kitten, which I'd been gifted as a souvenir. We tested it in the garden in front of my friend's house, and it destroyed everything that was growing there.

A large portion of my life, which made up for everything that I lost not hanging out with friends in the neighbourhood, was travelling to countries that my friends had never been to. I would decide which countries were my favourites based on how good their toy stores and video game rooms were. Spain had the best video games, so my parents would give two dollars to my brother Filip and me, and we'd spend a whole day going from one gaming machine to the next. Italy had amazing toy stores, Mexico was fascinating, and the US interesting in its colourfulness.

IT'S EASIER TO TAKE CARE OF MY SON THAN THE VIOLIN

I've bought a violin made by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini in 1783. It appeared at an auction four years ago, and cost more than a PlayStation and less than a space shuttle. I don't like to talk about money, but don't forget that I've been working since I was eight. The violin had rested for a good bit, owned by a family in France for 50 years. As it wasn't auctioned off, I bought it via valuable musical instrument dealers, because they're the ones who control the market. I got the privilege to be its historical guardian as it had been around 234 years before myself. It is part of the world's legacy, and you can be its keeper for a while only. Trust me when I say that it's easier for me to take care of Nikola than the violin – he demands less care.

Before this violin, I had borrowed a Stradivarius. Patrons, banks, insurance companies, and sometimes even states have collections of very valuable musical instruments, and they loan them to young talents because they have to be played. The Stradivari Society from Chicago let me use a violin from 1702 for three years.

I performed as a kid before Reagan in 1987, Gorbachev in 1988, and Pope John Paul in 1991. I had heard of them and was told they were big shots, but it didn't matter that much to me. Reagan was very warm and cordial, and he congratulated me. It was the same with Gorbachev. They transform and become more human when they're in front of a child. That impression is forever etched in my mind, more so than the feeling I got when I was playing.

I had my first crush when I was in elementary school. It remained platonic, nothing happened. I had my crew, and one buddy of mine liked chess, another liked painting, and I played the violin, but none of that was popular. Others trained football at Red Star, and I wasn't even the tallest boy in our homeroom group. There was certainly a part of me that suffered because of that. Afterwards, though, as it usually happens in life, it is just unbelievable to see how these people have turned out, and how far I've gone.

Right after elementary school, I was about 15 and had already enrolled in the academy, my first love happened. The first kiss: "Wow, what's this? What's going on??" We went to see a play, called A Flea in Her Ear, whose title I found funny. That was my first theatre play. It seems like it was necessary for a girlfriend to drag me out and get me into a theatre.

My parents let me find outlets for my feelings because they knew that what I was doing and what I was asked to do wasn't natural or normal for a child after all. If I hadn't had those outlets, I wouldn't be here now. I was always skateboarding. I remember well getting beaten up in the square in front of the Faculty of Philosophy. It was a couple of months before we left Serbia in 1992 and went to Italy. The square was full of people, I was practising jumping over a box, and then a kid comes over and leans into my face. I pick the board up, he slaps me on the face, with three more guys standing behind him. I fell down and they started kicking me. They were kicking with the square packed with people, and no one lifted a finger. It was only afterwards that someone helped me, I couldn’t breathe. Traumatic. When we moved to Italy, I decided never to be a victim of senseless violence again.

I HAVE COMBINED THE INCOMBINABLE WITH NELE KARAJLIĆ

It is classical music's own fault that it has become stiff. Even the composers and performers from a hundred years ago didn't only play for kings and the nobility. At one point it became obvious that new audiences aren't created that easily, so the strategy had to change a good deal. And it did. Rock el Clasico with Nele Karajlić and the 21 June concert in Belgrade's Tašmajdan combines the incombinable and is a symbiosis of two worlds. I'm curious, I don't have any restrictions in my mind, or any fear of experimenting, especially when something is as challenging as this. With the help of the young composer Ana Krstajić, who served as a translator of our musical worlds, we put together the elements that had not been put together before – classical music and the songs of The No Smoking Orchestra are combined in such a way that you don't see or notice the seam.

Six days later, when I had recovered a bit – of course, I didn't say anything to my parents, I only had bruises on my body because I covered my face with my hands – I went back to skateboarding. My brother Filip and me were skating in front of the Kolarac Endowment Building – we had this pipe that we used to slide on. My brother sets it up, I'm waiting for my turn, and then someone approaches me from behind and takes the board from me. The same thing happens to my brother, who didn't even notice it. There were three of them, and they ran off down the street. Feeling bummed out, we walked back to the square in front of the Faculty of Philosophy, where I'd gotten trampled on six days before. And then the guys from six days before show up. "Yo, Milenković!" I just said, "Leave us alone!" Since they had beaten me up, I was one of their crew now, so they got 20 guys with various kinds of weapons and asked me to show them where our skateboards had been stolen! The absurdities of the 1990s Belgrade! A horrible sense of discomfort.

We left for Italy as a result of many circumstances, not just because of my violin. Filip is the person I'm closest to, and we talk all the time, although, when I moved to New York in 1997, he stayed in Italy, which is where he lives now.

When I arrived in New York, I spent a year without any physical activity. The one thing I knew was kickboxing, so I was looking for something similar online and found sambo. I noticed that a few people were speaking Russian, which felt close to me somehow. Sambo is a self-defence art without weapons, and combat sambo was created for the Soviet special forces. One of the special forces guys, Alexander Barakov – who sadly passed away last year – was like a father figure to me in New York and took me under his wing for nearly five years. I became a combat sambo master and was the vice-president of the US sambo organization.

I met cellist Ani Aznavoorian at Juilliard, in New York, in my first year of study. I was 20. It was all imbued with a youthful spirit, we shared a passion for music, and that was enough. We were in a relationship for almost ten years. However, between the ages of 20 and 30, many things changed. It was clear that our lives were going in different directions – whereas I was still adventurous, she was more inclined towards stability. We remained friends even after the divorce. It was all very amicable, although I've seen people become very bitter easily when they get hurt. She remarried afterwards, gave birth to two children, and then got divorced. She sent me her best wishes when I got a son.

When you get used to being with one person, even after the divorce you're still looking for the same thing. It took me about six months to clear the fog in my mind and realize that I didn't have to look for that in everyone. These other people weren't looking for a life partner either. So I didn't put limits on myself any longer and didn't have a set plan.

I COULDN'T STAND STRAIGHT FOR A YEAR BECAUSE OF A RUSTY CHAIN

When I was 30, I couldn’t stand straight for more than a half hour. I lived a hard-knock sort of life for one year. I had a problem with the dura matter that protects the spinal cord – there was a cerebrospinal fluid leakage somewhere. When the leakage is drastic, and you stand up straight, instead of floating, the brain sinks and pressures the nerves, which results in horrible pain. I suppose it happened when I was locking my motorcycle and yanked the rusty chain and lock too hard. Then I started to feel pressure in my ear, it felt like I was on a plane. This was followed by an increasingly severe headache and nausea. The next morning I was on my way to Seattle from New York, and I couldn’t hold my head up. Since this is a relatively rare condition, they weren't sure what my problem was even after seven or eight months. God knows how many neurologists, as well as a team of surgeons, said that the problems was located at T-11 and T-12 vertebrae, but that they wouldn't know for sure until they opened me up. I'd never had a surgery, and it was all frightening to me. On top of it all, it was supposed to be experimental. Luckily, they managed to patch it all up. It took nearly a year for me to recover, mentally and physically.

And then, I found myself in Zagreb at a salsa event, dancing with this girl, and it hit me – that was a fantastic way to meet a member of the fairer sex. I remembered that one of my best friends, a Filipino guy called Phil Cortez, was a tango instructor. So I wrote to him saying that I wanted to learn how to tango, and he replies, "Who is she?" After about two or three lessons, I completely forgot what my original motivation was, and tango became an obsession of mine. I'd always have a pair of concert shoes and dancing shoes in my bag.

Almost two years later, Banjaluka and Gorica Grozdanović, my second wife, happened. It was during a tour with Edin Karamazov. She was a student of the guitar and knew Edin, so they said hello to each other in the dressing room, and I was attracted to her immediately. After the concert, they organized a dancing event in my honour and brought in a lady who was a tango champion. But that poor sweet girl was dancing the international tango and it wasn't going smoothly, so I took the opportunity to dance with Gorica the entire evening.

Until the pandemic started, I was on the road 200 days in a year. When the lockdown was declared, we were at our home in the US, and I became obsessed with cooking. I kept watching videos and preparing various kinds of pasta, risotto, and soups, I'd bake cakes and pastry too. There was one with marzipan and a meringue on top.

Nikola was born in the middle of the Covid pandemic, on 25 April 2020. In the US, the rule was that if you walked into a hospital with your wife, you couldn't leave until everything was over. So I spent three days and three nights in that room. I can't say that watching a baby being born is what I had been dreaming of. On the contrary, I thought I could slip out unnoticed. At 5.30am, a midwife came into the room: "Let's go, the baby wants to get out!" I pretended to be asleep on the couch, reckoning no one would notice me and they'd forget I was there. They prepared everything, and then she says to me: "Come on, baby daddy!" Wow, it was the first time anyone had ever said daddy to me! I assisted Gorica for three and a half hours! During the first minute, I felt like, "What am I doing here?" But honestly, that whole process is fascinating, impossible to describe. The moment itself and the waves of contractions, the way nature gets it all in order. When I saw the baby, I felt like laughing. It was unreal.

So, why Nikola? Because we couldn't decide on a name for months. Even when he was born, we still didn't know. On the second day, a nurse walks in with the paperwork: "Can I have the baby's name please?" So we said, "OK, it's Nikola."

There were times when I was lonely. On the road almost every day, at a different hotel. When the hubbub after the concert is over, at the end, it's just – nothing. You're alone. You try to catch some sleep because you're leaving at 5am. What's left is a sort of emptiness – you don't have enough energy to go to the next city, the next concert. Now I have a family and a home in Novi Sad. You can't put a price on it. I have this base from which I go somewhere for two or three days.

They say I was mad to come back to Serbia. No one should have to explain why they return to their home country, no matter what it's like. Even if it's the worst in the world, which it is not. I lived abroad for nearly 30 years and did everything I wanted. In Italy, New York, Illinois, at the best schools and in the best posts. But I'm following what fulfils me, the next challenge which allows me to be creative. The challenge is here. Also, I don't think along the same lines as ten years ago. As I'm getting older, and since my son was born, I've realized that contact over Skype cannot replace physical closeness after all, which was obvious during the coronavirus crisis. I wanted us to be closer to our family, on our soil. I considered Europe, so Serbia wasn't the only option. But I felt an ever stronger need to focus on our students and young talents. I can use my visibility to increase theirs, and so contribute to popularizing classical music in this country.

Generally, I don't drink. I couldn't keep the rhythm and recover from drink. But when I'm with other people, I do have cocktails – a Dirty Martini or an Old Fashion. I also like old folk songs. My favourites are "Opa, Opa" by Luis and Silvana Armenulić's "Šta Će Mi Život".

I have never faced a deep sadness or a tragedy, but the 1990s were traumatic for me. Every time I went to international competitions, it would be under a different flag and country name. I was hurt, but this also spurred me on and motivated me to show that we did have something positive and beautiful, not just war and nightmares.

I didn't do military service, but I've been a soldier since the age of eight. A soldier of the violin and classical music. Incidentally, we have five military officers in the family, so I do have that mentality of discipline, I like routine, procedures, but I don't shy away from heading into danger.

I've had many failures and stopped counting them. They're all just lessons. I see life as a whole and believe that at any given moment I am trying my best to do what I've been planning. And this includes everything – going uphill and downhill, succeeding and failing. If I have failed, then I couldn't have done any better. The point is not for me to dwell on it, but to think about what comes next, what I can learn from it. And there is a great deal. Life's trajectory isn't a straight line.

Every one of us has a bit of the universe, that divine energy and unlimited potential. I've simply always worked hard on that, sometimes practising for up to eight hours a day. They're essentially techniques, not some kind of special ability. But you must have the will. We have a lot of potential to do more. This is more obvious in some segments. For example, when people work out, and they see their body becoming stronger, faster – a different body. You can work out your mind too, as well as emotions. It all works as a single unit. This human potential fascinates me – some people developing not so that they could be better, but out of curiosity about how far they can go.

I believe that the universe is a great mirror, a reflection of our thoughts, and that it gives back what we send out into the ether. If we have negative thoughts and anticipations, this will get reflected and negative things will happen to us often. People are sometimes afraid to think positive thoughts because they think something bad will happen to them. It's somehow easier not to hope than hope for a positive outcome and fail.

I've accomplished a lot, and I could stop now. But it's not in my nature to stop. We often forget that what we do should make other people happy, that the hour and a half or two hours at a concert should make people forget as they listen to a different story through the music. That is my mission. Perhaps people will say this or that when I'm gone, but if anyone could say, "He touched the lives of these people or those people", or that I at least motivated the audience to contemplate something beautiful – then my mission will be accomplished.

Kurir.rs/ Jelena S. Spasić