Dear Pajo,

The sad news of your passing left us without words, with a tear in our eye and a heart full of pleasant memories of you. It is hard for us to say farewell in just a few words when we can’t even comprehend that you have gone. Backstage at Cankarjev Dom, the Križanke Summer Theatre and Congress Square so many memories of you live on. Memories of well-intentioned advice, bows, hugs, congratulations and encouraging exclamations of “toi toi toi”, with which you gave artists the best possible encouragement before they stepped on the stage. Memories of your cheery disposition and enthusiasm for work and the greatest passion that unites us all – a love for music.

You were an excellent musician, too, as first trombone of the opera orchestra. You enriched our team for 27 years as an exceptional person, first-rate friend, devoted and sympathetic colleague, and producer for the Ljubljana Festival. We are very proud of your courage and will of iron, which in recent years accompanied you to the very end. We are grateful for all the years we spent together.

We honoured your memory with a chamber concert in the church at Križanke and hope you heard it. Our hope was that the final movement of the Ode to Heavenly Joy from Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 would accompany you through the doors that lead into that higher world, up there amongst the stars, where the palette of most diverse tones will never end. With pain in our hearts and the awareness that we have lost a dear and precious person we are grateful to have been part of your life.

Dear friend, we will not forget you!

Your colleagues at Ljubljana Festival