Stefan Milenkovich (Milenkovic´) was born in Belgrade (Beograd), Yugoslavia in 1977 to a family of musical background.
At the age of two and a half, he began to study the violin with his father, who remained his devoted teacher for the next fifteen years.
He made his first public appearance on January 14, 1980, at the age of three.
His first appearance as a soloist with orchestra came two years later.
In 1994, he became the youngest student ever to graduate from the University of Belgrade.
Stefan went on to the famous Juilliard School of Music, New York, to study with the legendary star-developer Dorothy DeLay, whose long list of former students includes Itzhak Perlman, Nigel Kennedy, Gil Shaham, and Sarah Chang.
Since his first international competition at the age of seven — the "Jaroslav Kocijan" in the former Czechoslovakia — where he won First Prize, Stefan has been awarded First Prize at the Rodolfo Lipizer Competition (Italy) and the Ludwig Spohr International Violin Competition (Germany), Second Prize at the Paganini International Violin Competition (Italy) and the Tibor Varga Competition (Switzerland), and Third Prize at the Yehudi Menuhin Competition (United Kingdom). In 1993, at age sixteen, he participated in the for-seventeen-and-above Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition of Belgium and won the 12th prize for the violin. The next year, he surpassed his elders to win the Silver Medal at the Indianapolis International Violin Competition in the United States and the Fourth Prize at the Hanover International Violin Competition in Germany.
Stefan began to perform extensively in 1984. He was invited to play for President Ronald Reagan at a Christmas concert in Washington, DC, in 1987. In 1988, he played for Mikhail Gorbachev, the president of the former USSR, when Mr. Gorbachev visited Belgrade. In 1991, he played for Pope John Paul II, who has invited him back to Vatican several times. Stefan gave his 1000th concert in 1993 in Monterrey, Mexico, and is approaching his 2000th one this year. His tours have taken him to countries around the globe, including Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Austria, Germany, Hungary, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Finland, Switzerland, Israel, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Croatia, Poland, Bulgaria, Sri Lanka, Mexico, China, Australia, Canada, the United States, and Brazil. He has played with a number of world-famous orchestras, such as the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, the Dortmund and Rhein Philharmonics, the Hanover Symphony (Germany), the Orchestra of Radio-France, the Helsinki Philharmonic (Finland), the National Orchestra of Belgium, the Solisti Veneti, Santa Cecilia, and Sofia Soloist Orchestras (Italy), the Belgrade Philharmonic (Yugoslavia), the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra (Russia), the Mexico State Symphony, the Melbourne, West Australian and Queensland Symphonies (Australia), the Hungarian National Orchestra, the New York Chamber Symphony (United States), the Orquesta Sinfonica de Estado de Sao Paolo (Brazil), and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. For the past two years, he has teamed up with Sri-Lankan-born pianist Rohan De Silva, Best Accompanist at the 1990 Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition.
Stefan made his first US appearances in 1987 at the Newport Music Festival in Rhode Island and a pre-concert for the Mostly Mozart Festival at Avery Fisher Hall in New York. After his recognition at the 1994 Indianapolis International Violin Competition, he came back to play the Wieniawski Violin Concerto No. 2 with Arizona's Flagstaff Symphony Orchestra, the Glazunov Concerto and Gershwin Preludes with Colorado's San Juan Symphony, the Prokofiev Violin Concertos with the Evansville Symphony orchestra, Mozart's Violin Concerto No.5 with the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, and (???) with the North Akansas Symphony Orchestra. In 1997, he was a winner of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions. The Young Concert Artists (YCA) Series presented his New York debut recital at the 92nd Street Y in April 1998 and his Washington, DC debut at the Kennedy Center in March 1999. On December 26, 1998, he was featured on National Public Radio's talkshow "Weekend All Things Considered." On April 21, 1999, Stefan made his New York concerto debut in the YCA's Diamond Concert series at Alice Tully Hall with the New York Chamber Symphony. For the past two years, he has gone to musical halls, libraries and schools around the US, where he not only plays but also listens to the students and gives them advice and tips on how to play the violin better.
When the Bosnian-Herzegovinian war reached its height in 1994, the Milenkovich family moved to Italy, where they have been living since. Stefan has appeared at a number of charity concerts in Yugoslavia and abroad, all profits from which were used for humanitarian purposes in his war-torn home country. Stefan is currently living in New York City.
For further details, see Stefan Milenkovich