The Photograph

Last Monday I played at the “Meet the Students” faculty performance and talk. Berklee Aspire 2026 was about to begin, so it was a great opportunity to meet new students, talk about the courses our department offers, and play a little music.

I played the opening number and, after finishing, quietly sat back in the audience.

A nice gentleman was sitting next to me. His eyes were smiling, and his demeanor was utterly calm and composed, yet warm and friendly. He kindly complimented my playing, and I thanked him.

He asked almost immediately:

“Where are you from?”

“Serbia,” I replied.

“Ah... Serbia,” he said with a noticeable German accent. “That's wonderful. I'm from Munich. You know, I was a very close friend of Duško Gojković. I knew him for many years. It's a long story.”

I was stunned.

Duško was a famous trumpet player and a legend of Serbian and Yugoslav jazz. I never had the pleasure of knowing him personally, but I had actually met Duško’s mother.

It happened on October 26, 1986.

My closest childhood friend, Drda, and I were waiting for a bus to Belgrade at the Jagodina bus station. We were trying to catch the afternoon bus because Miles Davis was performing that night at Sava Center during his Tutu tour. We had waited a long time for that opportunity.

An older, elegantly dressed lady was waiting as well. The bus was late, and we started chatting.

She asked us where we were going.

We told her we loved jazz and were going to hear the incredible Miles Davis.

She smiled.

“Jazz? That’s wonderful. Then you must know my son, Duško Gojković.”

We were completely blown away.

What were the chances? We had just met the mother of one of the greatest figures in Balkan jazz — a trumpet player who had performed with Woody Herman and Maynard Ferguson.

All of this went through my head while I was sitting next to my new friend at Berklee’s David Friend Recital Hall.

Two days later, he walked into my Berklee Aspire class.

After class, he came over, sat at the piano, and began playing a beautiful tune.

I listened carefully.

“Is it your piece?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied. “Vlad, at this point in my life, I only want to compose more. You know... I am seventy.”

His eyes were smiling again.

“You write beautiful music,” I said. “I hear Bill Evans... and Michel Legrand.”

He simply nodded, smiling.

“You should come by during my office hours. We need to talk more. And you have to tell me more about you and Duško.”

“Of course,” he said.

He left just as my next class was about to begin.

The next morning I saw a new WhatsApp message from my sister Sonja.

Attached was a black-and-white photograph.

She wrote only one sentence:

"What a photograph... It looks like Dad and Vlajče took it."

I opened the image and immediately froze.

The photograph captured a collision of old and new Jagodina. It had clearly been taken sometime in the 1980s.

In the foreground stood the older, beautiful house of our godfather, Vladimir “Vlajče” Đorđević, professor of German at the Jagodina Gymnasium and my father’s closest friend.

In the background, above his roof, rose the new socialist-era high-rise building where we lived. Only the top two balconies and one window could be seen on the photo.

The second balcony from the top was ours.

The side window belonged to the room where my piano stood.

This was the place where jazz started for me.

Vlajče was a gentleman of another era.

He was always elegantly dressed, wonderfully charming, an erudite man, and one of the funniest people I have ever known. His storytelling was legendary. The way he told a story would make people roll on the floor laughing. He spoke excellent English, loved America, and had even traveled there with my father years before I ever imagined that one day I would live there myself.

Almost every day he would stop by our apartment.

Then he and my father would go for a walk and end up in nearby Hotel Jagodina. Local Romani musicians played there every evening. Most of them were their childhood friends, so the atmosphere was always special.

I would occasionally stop by late at night after spending time with my own friends in town.

The musicians would play swing inspired by Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli. Then they would sit at the table with us, drinking Jagodinska Ružica wine spritzers and telling stories about Jagodina after World War II, about the 1950s and 1960s.

Živa, Mirko, Branko, Miki.

I had always known that Živa Petrović was one of my first teachers of swing.

I still remember playing boogie for him. He listened carefully and later told my father:

“Mića, your son plays great boogie. He will soon start to play swing like this.”

Then he taught me “Ain’t Misbehavin’.”

Looking at that old photograph almost forty years later, while talking to a student who had been a close friend of Duško Gojković, I understood something larger.

I was not only learning swing from an individual musician. I was growing up inside a whole musical world — a world of friendships, stories, cafés, and musicians who carried traditions from one generation to another.

Those musicians were my first teachers of swing.