Summary: Dragan Sremec is a professor of saxophone and the vice-dean at the Zagreb Music Academy. He is the founder of the Zagreb Saxophone Quartet, and for many years he was the principal saxophonist with the Zagreb Philharmonic and the Croatian Radio Television Symphony Orchestra.<br> <br> Dragan was the first ever graduate in saxophone from the Zagreb Academy in 1981 and went on to study in Paris with Daniel Deffayet and with Dr Eugene Rousseau at the IU School of Music.<br> <br> He has performed as a soloist and as a member of the Zagreb Saxophone Quartet in the prestigious halls of many European countries, the USA, South America and Asia. He played with all major orchestras in Croatia and Slovenia, with the Orchestra of the French Republican Guard, the US Navy Band and many more.<br> <br> He made many solo recordings for Croatian Radio and Television, and with his quartet, he has recorded 11 albums. He has premiered over fifty works by foremost Croatian and Slovenian composers, and currently, Dragan is artistic director of the 2018 World Saxophone Congress, hosted in Zagreb, Croatia.<br> <br> In this episode: My life is a series of coincidences. Too old for violin and piano, the guitar is already full of candidates. Saxophone, play the saxophone. My professor Nochta was a great teacher and musician. I got a Fulbright grant to study with Eugene Rousseau. Deffayet was very polite, very gentle with me. Be open to knowledge. The bloody war started. Almost 30 years with the Zagreb Saxophone Quartet. When you practise a lot, you don’t need a lot of warm-ups. Just practise. If you don’t have a goal, you’re just stalling. The World Saxophone Congress. Avoiding a secluded kind of saxophone sect that nobody knows.
