There was a ten-year break between my First Prize at the 2008 Guitar Art Festival International Competition in Belgrade (Serbia) and the FIrst Prize at the 2018 Hong Kong Altamira International Guitar Competition (China). In the meantime, I didn’t compete internationally at all. My first time taking a flight was in 2016 when I left Serbia to pursue my Doctoral Degree at the University of Minnesota (USA). It was the first flight out of many and the beginning of something valuable and exciting. Competitions brought me much excitement, but only as much as they were a tool for completing something more valuable. In 2008, competitions were my chance to publicly perform my favorite high school piece – Alberto Ginastera’s Sonata op. 47 (at the age of 16!). Ten years later, in 2018, I entered competitions for two reasons: 1) To travel the entire world because, as I said before, my first flight was at age 25, and I didn’t travel much outside of Serbia up to that point. 2) To internationally present my research papers on Sor, Llobet, Britten, and Brouwer. My first year studying at the University of Minnesota in 2016-17 was tough financially. The second year (2017-18) was better, and I focused all my energy on accomplishing the two goals previously mentioned. My plan for 2018 was to find inspiring destinations where guitar competitions take place and to see if I could both present my lectures and compete. This would be a win-win situation – I would travel to a great destination, present my research paper at a relevant event, and enter a guitar competition with a chance of winning a prize. I started searching for guitar events at great destinations and sending emails to see who would be interested in hosting my lecture. The first person who responded positively was Mesut Ozgen, director of the Miami International GuitART Festival. In 2018 he was hosting on of the largest concert artist competitions in the US, with more than $10,000 in cash prices for a single performance category. I went to Miami five days before the festival and stayed at the South Beach. For all those days, I practiced my guitar only once – outdoors in front of the place where I stayed. This is definitely not something I would advise to anyone, but as I said before, my main goal was to travel and present my research, and the competition was only a bonus. I spent all the time exploring the city of Miami, going to different beaches, and meeting interesting people. Two of the people I met came to watch my performance in the final stage of the competition, and they didn’t believe that a guy who was hanging out with them on the beach is suddenly in the final round of a classical guitar competition. My lecture at the Miami GuitART Festival went great, and I had a great discussion with Prof. Frank Koonce. He liked my idea of analyzing Miguel Llobet’s “Variations on Sor’s Theme” from a semiotic perspective. The paper on the same subject was published next year (2019) in the GFA’s Soundboard Journal. The next task was to succeed in the competition. The first round was not the best, but I made it to the second. I played better in the second round and made it to the finals, which already was an astonishing success. There are videos from this round on my YouTube channel. One of the biggest technical challenges was related the humidity in Miami. My fingers would get super sticky when sweating under pressure, and I couldn’t control my sound. In the third round, I played Nuccio D’Angelo’s “Due Canzoni Lidie”, a piece that was not entirely ready for a competition performance. I won the third prize, which felt like a dream come true. This was a unique competition experience because the level was super high, with Marko Topchii (Ukraine – the most successful classical guitar competitor of all time) winning the 1st place, Jihyung Park (South Korea – who later that year won the Changsha Guitar Competition in China) the 2nd, and Jesus Serrano (Mexico – also a super successful competitor who won the Boston Guitar Competition) the 4th. My next goal was to enter two chamber music competitions and visit the GFA convention for the first time. Soon after, my guitar duo colleague Filip Živanović and I won the 1st prize at the Southern Guitar Festival Ensemble competition in Columbia (South Carolina). At the GFA convention in Louisville (Kentucky), we won the 3rd prize (with 1st not awarded). Playing in chamber music ensembles is something that I have always enjoyed, and I even finished a separate MA degree in Chamber Music Performance at the University of Arts in Belgrade (Serbia). The GFA experience was great, and I had many meaningful conversations with some of the world’s best classical guitarists. Following the GFA Convention that took place in June, I returned to Minneapolis. I remember practicing my solo repertoire between different GFA events and the evening gatherings because I was supposed to travel to Hong Kong in July to apply the same strategy as in Miami – I would explore the vibrant city of Hong Kong, give a lecture on Leo Brouwer at a relevant conference, and enter another solo competition as a bonus. First, I traveled to Serbia, and during a super busy week, I gave three concerts and one lecture while preparing for my trip to Hong Kong. I departed from Belgrade to Hong Kong on July 8th, 2018. Two events were happening simultaneously at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts in July 2018. One was the International Guitar Research Conference, and I gave a lecture on Leo Brouwer. The other one was the Hong Kong Altamira International Guitar Symposium. I gave my presentation on Leo Brouwer on the first day. I was the first to present because I needed time to practice for three rounds of the competition. My lecture was about the semiotic analysis of Leo Brouwer’s second movement from “El Decameron Negro”. I was already exhausted from all the competitions and travels that happened in June, and what kept me alive those days were the adrenaline, the amazing city of Hong Kong, and the local iced milk tea. I decided to play “Due Canzoni Lidie” in the first round. One of my guitar heroes, Aniello Desiderio, was judging the first round, and the first time I heard “Due Canzoni Lidie” was on one of his CDs. After the second round, my rank was no. 1, and in the following days, I was trying hard not to think about winning the 1st prize. I remember the night before the final round walking to the place where I was staying, drinking the Hong Kong iced milk tea, and experiencing the overwhelming feeling that this was my moment to shine and win something special one day before my 27th birthday. “This is the moment in which I will be rewarded for all the hard work and thousands of hours spent with the guitar”, I was thinking. In the final round, I pushed myself hard to squeeze out the last drops of energy. I played the best I could at the moment, and I won the 1st prize. On the last night of the Symposium, we had a dinner with Hanson Yao (a master luthier and the owner of Altamira Guitars), David Russel, and many other musicians. I remember walking back to the place where I stayed and feeling as if the entire sky with all the possibilities just opened in front of me. The next day was super rainy, but I felt better than ever because it was my 27th birthday and the first day after a giant success. I had some great Hong Kong style food with my AirBnB host Wesley, and later that evening took my flight back to Serbia. Now, I must go back to the beginning of this article. During all these events, I didn’t feel almost any pressure related to becoming a competition winner because the prizes were only bonuses on top of my travels and the lectures I gave at important events. I won prizes in Miami and Hong Kong as a soloist, and at the GFA Convention and Southern Guitar Festival as a chamber musician. I visited great cities, explored different cultures, made friendships, expanded my professional network, and won competition prizes that opened many more possibilities for the time ahead. To conclude, it seems to me that many young classical guitarists go to competitions to win prizes as their main goal. Only a few of them become winners of major competitions like Hong Kong Altamira, and only a handful of those manage to incorporate those successes into something meaningful that fits properly into a larger scheme of their life. This is something worth discussing further in my future posts.