A great man is one who collects knowledge the way a bee collects honey and uses it to help people overcome the difficulties they endure - hunger, ignorance and disease!
- Nikola Tesla

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
- Franklin Roosevelt

While their territory has been devastated and their homes despoiled, the spirit of the Serbian people has not been broken.
- Woodrow Wilson

Marta Milosevic-Brankovic

Marta Milosevic-Brankovic was born in Belgrade, Serbia. She has captured the attention of audience and critics alike since her concerto debut at Ganz Rudolph Hall in Chicago in 2005 where one of the most famous pianists alive, Abbey Simon (Professor at the Juilliard School) personally attended the concert and highly acclaimed her performance of Bach and Chopin. At the age of six Marta took her first piano lesson and already a year later she played her first public concert. She was 21 when she graduated at the Music Art Academy in Belgrade as the youngest student with the highest GPA in the generation. She received her early musical training in class of Russian Professor Jakuthon Mlhailovich, a graduate from the Moscow Conservatory. At the same time she has also completed Media studies at the University of Art in Belgrade. During her studies, she worked with eminent artists from her country and auended a number of piano master courses of the following Professors: Sijavus Gadzijev (Moscow). Tamara Stefanovic (Koeln). Dr. David Abot (Zurich-New York), Dr. Tatjana Rankovich (New York), Dr. Omitry Rachmanov (Chicago-New York) and many others.

In the summer of 2005 Marta was given scholarship to participate in the famous International Keyboard Institute and Festival (IKIF) in New York where she worked with concert performers such as Jerome Rose, Fabio Bidini, Dr. Dmitry Bashirov, Viktor Rosenbaum, Michael Oelbaum and Irina Morozova and she had couple of highly acclaimed performances.

Marta started her international career in her early twenties. As a solo pianist and chamber musician she received a number of first prizes in her homeland, scholarships and foreign prizes such as: the second prize at the International Competition Nikolai Rubinstein in Paris. the third prize at Carlo Ceki International Competition in Rome.

Recently the Ministry of Culture in Serbia awarded her with special scholarship for gifted young artists who are making successful solo career in the United States.

Marta recorded for radio and television In Belgrade and in Chicago. She also recorded four TV video clips with works of Chopin, Schoenberg, Ligeti and Bartok for national TV programs. They are an interesting mixture of techno sound incorporated in traditional classical piano sound. In 2002, she had a role of pianist performer of Schoenberg works and a role of main protagonist in an experimental movie. The movie was awarded the First prize at the International Festival of Short and Documentary Film in Belgrade. She has also appeared in couple of different movies during the 2005 as a performer and as an actor. Marta spent one year at the Roosevelt University in the special section called Chicago College of Performing Arts where she received a scholarship for starting Master degree in Piano Performance in the studio of well known Russian-Jewish Professor Dmitry Rachmanov: At the same time she has finished Master degree in Belgrade at the University of Art in department sponsored by European Union in the subject about Theory of Performance.

Marta lives in Miami, Florida where she has recently finished Master Program in piano performance at Florida International University in studio of well known concert performer and Professor Kemal Gekic. She received a lull scholarship for her studies. So far Marta has given more than fifty solo concerts in Europe and in her home country. She gave performances In Miami at the Yamaha Piano Music Center in February of 2007 and in the Wertheim Hall at FIU in May.

From January 2006 she played in numerous halls including Carnival Center (New Opera House) where she participated two times in the Subtropics Festival performing Cage music and in Bass Museum. where she performed Cuban and Austrian music.

In November of 2007 she appeared couple of times as a soloist with FlU Wind Ensemble. In March of 2008 Marta had highly acclaimed solo concerts in Porto Vita Villa Grande in Aventura. Steinway Gallery in Coral Gables and In Bass Museum of Art.

During 2009 among numerous recitals in South Florida back by popular demand cycle at the Bass Museum of Art, organized a special recital for Marta for 300 people.

Source: Official Web Site


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People Directory

Vinka Ellesin

Vinka Ellesin was a folk singer who sang Serbian music in the sevdalinka style. The national Serbian community referred to her as the "Queen of Sevdalinka". She was born to Serbian immigrants, Djoka and Sophia (Soka) Ellesin, in Akron, Ohio around 1921. By the age of 16, she was singing on a nationally broadcast radio show on WADC. Later, she performed at the Black Whale, a well-known club in Cleveland. In 1938, the bandleader Sammy Kaye invited her to audition to be the lead vocalist in his orchestra, but she turned him down, preferring to continue singing Serbian folk music instead. During World War II, Ellesin performed at the Blue Danube and the Russian Samovar in Detroit, Mich. where she lived. Ellesin stayed in the Pittsburgh area for an extended period of time in the early 1950s while she performed nightly at the Sunrise Inn in Monroeville, Pa. During the 1930s through the 1970s, Ellesin toured throughout North America and Australia while returning to Pittsburgh many times to perform at local Serb National Federation events.

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Publishing

Serbian Americans: History—Culture—Press

by Krinka Vidaković-Petrov, translated from Serbian by Milina Jovanović

Learned, lucid, and deeply perceptive, SERBIAN AMERICANS is an immensely rewarding and readable book, which will give historians invaluable new insights, and general readers exciting new ways to approach the history​ of Serbian printed media. Serbian immigration to the U.S. started dates from the first few decades of 19th c. The first papers were published in San Francisco starting in 1893. During the years of the most intense politicization of the Serbian American community, the Serbian printed media developed quickly with a growing number of daily, weekly, monthly and yearly publications. Newspapers were published in Serbian print shops, while the development of printing presses was a precondition for the growth of publishing in general. Among them were various kinds of books: classical Serbian literature, folksong collections, political pamphlets, works of the earliest Serbian American writers in America (poetry, prose and plays), first translations from English to Serbian, books about Serb immigrants, dictionaries, textbooks, primers, etc.

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