One Dream at a Time, a Greater Dream Unfolds

Sinisa Ciric's Journey from Sabac, Serbia to Savannah, Georgia

From his childhood in Sabac, Serbia, to an international music career and his leadership role with Savannah Music Festival, Dr. Sinisa Ciric reflects on the dreams, people, and experiences that shaped his journey in an interview with his hometown newspaper, Glas Podrinja.

The original interview was published on October 4, 2026, in Serbian by Glas Podrinja, Sinisa’s hometown newspaper in Sabac, Serbia. Read the original interview here.

For our English-speaking readers, we are pleased to share the full English translation of the interview below.

Sinisa Ciric’s Journey from Sabac to Savannah

“Love for music did not happen in a single moment. It grew out of many things,” says Sabac native Sinisa Ciric as he reflects on his earliest steps in music and on the teachers and mentors who shaped his view of art and helped guide a boy with a violin toward some of the world’s greatest concert halls. Born and raised in Sabac, Sinisa began studying violin at an early age, setting in motion a journey that would eventually take him far beyond his hometown.

“My path, however, was not always so straightforward. As a boy, I was choosing between the violin, competitive air-rifle shooting, and later Olympic handball. For a long time, I was interested in many different things,” says the now-accomplished artist, violinist, concertmaster, music educator, and director of a prestigious music festival, who has built most of his professional career in the United States, where he has lived and worked for more than two decades.

From spending allowance on sheet music to Carnegie Hall

“My parents took me to classical music concerts at Kolarac concert hall in Belgrade. One of the first concerts I clearly remember was a performance by Sreten Krstic and Jovan Kolundzija, famous Serbian violinists. That was when I practically fell in love with Bach and his violin concertos. My godfather, who still lives in Germany, bought me recordings of Bach violin concertos on cassette tapes, and I listened to them almost every night before going to sleep. I also remember waiting for months for the Peters edition of the sheet music to arrive in Belgrade. I was probably around twelve years old when I told my parents that I would go to Belgrade by myself and buy it with the money I had saved. Looking back, perhaps that detail is especially meaningful to me now. I didn’t yet know that music would become my life, but clearly it had already become something I couldn’t live without.

I studied violin at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad and performed with the Serbian National Theatre Opera in Novi Sad and Camerata Academica. After completing my studies and following the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, I first worked as a freelance musician with the National Theatre Opera in Belgrade and later secured a permanent position with the Radio Television of Serbia Symphony Orchestra.

I then moved to the United States, where I completed my master’s and doctoral studies at UGA and built a career as a performer, educator, and later, arts administrator. With the ARCO ensemble, I recorded numerous albums as both a soloist and ensemble member and performed several times at Carnegie Hall.

Beginning in 2010, I served as Concertmaster of the Savannah Philharmonic for fifteen years, and today I hold the title of Concertmaster Emeritus. Alongside my performance career, I became increasingly involved in arts administration, first as Director of Operations and later as General Manager of the Savannah Philharmonic Orchestra.

In 2023, I was selected for a prestigious League of American Orchestras program in collaboration with Julliard School of Music, designed to develop future leaders of orchestras, festivals, operas, ballet companies, and youth orchestras. That experience, and the people I met through it, became very important in shaping my next professional step.

In 2025, I was selected as Executive Director of Savannah Music Festival, which today is my primary professional role. I still make an effort to maintain my career as a violinist and perform whenever my time and schedule allow.

At the moment, I don’t have a concert in Serbia that I can officially announce, but I would love to return to the concert stage in Serbia, and Sabac would, of course, hold a special place.

I think such a concert would have a completely different meaning for me today than it would have twenty or thirty years ago. When you return to the place where you started after so many different life experiences, you are no longer simply performing a program. In a way, you bring with you everything that happened between leaving and returning.”

Finding Your Own Path

What was the transition from the artistic scene in Serbia to the United States like, and what was the greatest cultural and musical challenge?

“My arrival in America represented a new beginning for me, but I never viewed it as a rejection of my previous life. Quite the opposite — I brought everything I had learned in Sabac, Novi Sad, and Belgrade with me.

I spoke English well, and continuing my education through a master’s degree was a natural next step. Through a fortunate set of circumstances, I connected with Levon Ambartsumian at the University of Georgia and became his student and assistant. He gave me an enormous amount of confidence. Everything I had brought with me from Serbia took on a new dimension under his guidance.

He was there for virtually every important turning point. I completed my doctorate under his mentorship, and during those years came recordings, concerts, and performances at Carnegie Hall. Our collaboration and friendship continue to this day.

The greatest challenge for me wasn’t overcoming one major hardship, but finding my own path within an entirely new system. I quickly realized how important it is to believe in what you know and what you are capable of, while never losing the desire to keep learning and growing.

I think America particularly reinforced one idea for me: you have to surround yourself with good people. People who will mentor you, connect you with others, share their own experiences, and help you recognize possibilities you might not have seen on your own.

A career is very rarely built entirely alone.”

Roots Matter

“You need curiosity, a willingness to change, and the ability to recognize the people from whom you can learn.”

Have you fulfilled all of your aspirations to perform in major concert halls, or is there still somewhere you would like to perform?

“Carnegie Hall certainly holds a special place in the life of every classical musician. I have been fortunate to perform there several times, and those are experiences you never forget.

But what is interesting is that once you stand on a stage like that, you don’t feel as though you have reached some final destination. Quite the opposite. You realize that every moment like that is simply part of a much longer journey.

It has always been important to me to remember where I came from. There is quite a geographical and life journey between the child in Sabac waiting for the sheet music he wanted to play, and Carnegie Hall. But to me, those two images are not in conflict. One probably would not exist without the other.

Over time, I’ve learned that the quality of a musical experience does not always have anything to do with the size or fame of the concert hall. Some performances before much smaller audiences can remain just as deeply etched in your memory.”

Authenticity Is Essential

You make an effort to introduce American audiences to the music of the Balkans as well. How do they respond to our traditional rhythms?

“With the Balkan Quartet, I had the opportunity to combine my classical training with the music of the region I come from. Certain odd meters, melodic turns, and ways of phrasing feel natural to us because we grew up with them. To American audiences, they often sound completely new.

I think the biggest mistake is trying to ‘translate’ that kind of music too much for the audience. Authenticity is what matters most. People don’t need to know whether they are listening to a rhythm in seven-eight or nine-eight to feel its energy.

Music can often describe a culture far better than we can with words.

America changed me and gave me tremendous opportunities. It is my home today. But everything I brought with me — Sabac, Serbia, the people who taught me, the music I listened to as a child — did not disappear. It simply became part of something new.”

With Honor Comes Responsibility

As the Executive Director of a major festival, how difficult is it to balance the emotions of an artist with the rational decision-making required of a manager?

“I think that combination is actually one of my greatest strengths today. I could never look at an artist as simply a line item in a budget. I know what it means to spend years learning an instrument, to walk onto a stage in front of an audience, to prepare for a concert, to audition, and to live with both good and not so good performances.

But at the same time, today I have a responsibility to an entire organization — its employees, artists, audiences, donors, sponsors, and a multimillion-dollar budget.

Sometimes a director has to say ‘no’ to something the artist within him would gladly say ‘yes’ to. But my goal is not for management to triumph over art. Quite the opposite. Good management must make great art possible.

Savannah Music Festival is especially exciting because it is difficult to place it into a single frame. It is an organization that brings some of the most important artists of our time to Savannah.

When I received the call in 2025 telling me that I had been selected as Executive Director, it was difficult to describe that moment as anything other than the professional fulfillment of many dreams, both big and small. At the same time, I was very aware of both the tremendous honor and the responsibility of leading an institution like this.

Savannah Music Festival today has an almost iconic status in the city. It is especially important to me that our work is not limited to festival concerts. Through educational programs such as Musical Explorers and Savannah Jazz Academy, music reaches thousands of children, including many young people who might otherwise never have such an opportunity.”

Educators Who Teach, Influence, and Transform

Through your work as an educator, is there anything you have carried with you from the teachers you studied with in Serbia?

“Although I spend less time teaching directly these days, educating young people remains a very important part of my professional life. I carry so much of what my own teachers taught me.

My first violin teacher in Sabac was Ahmet Lekic, whom people in Sabac know very well and whom, unfortunately, we lost far too soon. He was gentle but consistent. He recognized my talent and tried to guide me and teach me discipline at a time when the violin didn’t always win out over all my other interests.

In high school, my teacher was another legendary local educator, Brana Vukovic, who gave me a much more serious technical approach to the instrument.

At the Academy in Novi Sad, I studied with Professor Uros Pesic, the person who probably had the single greatest influence on me as a young artist. He was a fantastic teacher and an extraordinary person. Perhaps the best indication of just how great his influence was is the fact that I named my oldest son Uros after him.

Later, in America, Levon Ambartsumian played that role in my life in a different way.

That is why, when I speak with young people today, I don’t talk only about practicing. I talk to them about how important it is to find people from whom they can learn. Talent is important. Hard work is essential. But a good teacher or mentor can sometimes change the entire course of a life.

Without question, Ahmet Lekic was the teacher who laid the first foundations of my technique and instilled in me a love for the instrument. When I think back to that period today, I believe his greatest gift was that he never tried to turn me into some version of a child I simply wasn’t at the time.

Interestingly, many of my earliest musical memories are not connected only to lessons. They are also of my parents taking me to Kolarac, Sreten Krstic and Jovan Kolundzija playing Bach, the cassette tapes my godfather sent me from Germany that I listened to before going to sleep, and waiting for sheet music to arrive.

When I put it all together, my love for music did not happen in a single moment. It grew out of many things.”

Distance Does Not Break Connections

How much do you miss Serbia, and do you maintain professional ties with the music scene there?

“Serbia is part of me, regardless of how long I have lived in America, and Sabac holds a particularly special place within that.

My sister and brother-in-law still live in Sabac, and both teach piano at the music school. My parents are in Belgrade, so our family connections with Serbia remain very strong.

And then there is perhaps my most important connection to Sabac — my wife, Maja, is also from Sabac. We were actually high school sweethearts. Then almost an entire lifetime happened while we were apart, until we found each other again in 2011 and decided to continue our lives together.

For me, that is one of life’s more beautiful stories precisely because it shows how difficult it is to predict where life will take you.

Maja has also built a very successful career of her own. Today, she runs her own agency and works to promote the arts, education, and the things she herself believes in.

In our home, it is difficult to completely separate our personal and professional lives because both Maja and I are connected to the arts, culture, marketing, education, and community work.

Family is very important to us. We are deeply involved in supporting all three of our children: our oldest son has begun his career in Washington as an attorney; our daughter, Anastasia, has been seriously studying ballet for nine years and also plays the flute; and our youngest, Luka, plays trumpet and is dedicated to training and passionate about soccer.

As the time goes by, the more clearly I understand that professional success doesn’t mean very much if you don’t have people with whom you can share it.

My work today involves many evening events, concerts, meetings, travel, and periods of the year when the Festival practically becomes a twenty-four-hour-a-day way of life. So I don’t try so much to ‘find’ time as I make a conscious effort to create it for the people who matter to me.

Because of all of that, regardless of the miles between us, Sabac has never become simply a place from our past.”

Dreams Along the Way

Would you say you are living the “American Dream,” or the dream of a boy from Sabac?

“I prefer the dream of a boy from Sabac. The American Dream may be part of that story, because America truly is a place where I was given the opportunity to grow, learn, change professions, and push my own boundaries.

But the child who listened to Bach on a cassette player in Sabac had no plan to one day earn a doctorate in America, perform several times at Carnegie Hall, spend fifteen years as concertmaster of an American orchestra, and ultimately lead one of the most unique music festivals in the United States.

There is no such plan. There is only the next step.

Throughout my career, what has mattered most to me has been believing that I could take that next step, continuing to learn, and remaining curious enough to accept the possibility that my path might not look the way I imagined it would when I was twenty.

That is why I don’t think I fulfilled one great dream. I would rather say that I have been fortunate enough throughout my life to fulfill many dreams that, as a child, I didn’t even know I could dream.”

Be Curious, Believe, and Dream…

“Never stop learning.

Talent is important, but talent alone is not enough. Hard work is essential, but even that is not everything.

You need curiosity, a willingness to change, and the ability to recognize the people from whom you can learn.

I was incredibly fortunate that, at different points in my life, Ahmet Lekic, Brana Vukovic, Uros Pesic, Levon Ambartsumian, and many others came into my life and gave me something I did not yet have on my own.

So I would tell a young person not to try to do everything alone.

Seek out good teachers and mentors. Surround yourself with positive, capable people. Ask questions. Listen to the experiences of others. Build relationships. Accept that you will make mistakes. And don’t allow one failure to convince you that you aren’t capable of something.

And there is something else that seems especially important to me today: don’t decide too early what your career has to look like.

I wanted to be a violinist. I was a violinist, a concertmaster, a professor; I recorded albums and performed at Carnegie Hall. Then I discovered that I could lead an orchestra. After that, I discovered that I could lead a festival.

None of those things erased what came before. Each one built upon the last.

If you have knowledge, a strong work ethic, curiosity, and confidence in your own abilities, the path can take you much farther than you are capable of imagining when you are twelve or thirteen years old.

At that age, all I wanted was to get to Belgrade and buy the sheet music for a Bach concerto.

It turned out to be a pretty good beginning.”

Originally published in Glas Podrinja | October 4, 2026

Interview by Slavica Gajic

English translation published by Klassikum