In this Walk Your Talk episode, Vedrana Miholić meets Croatian composer Sara Glojnarić in Samobor to talk about creativity, collaboration, AI and the human connections behind artistic work.
Sara writes digitally in a studio with a piano, synthesizers and a computer. Her music draws on electronic sounds and pop culture, while her projects explore questions of memory, identity and the world around her.
Creating an opera changes the scale of that work. Sara moves from working alone to collaborating with directors, designers, musicians and technical teams. Sara explains how she stays composed: she listens to feedback and trusts people she may never have worked with before.
That trust also depends on making a vision understandable to others. She compares a score to an architectural plan: it must communicate how the work should be performed. The conductor translates the composer’s artistic intentions into instructions the orchestra can perform.
The conversation then turns to AI and creative work. Sara uses ChatGPT to write plugins that speed up repetitive tasks in her music software. She treats AI as an assistant for those tasks and keeps the artistic decisions in her own hands.
For Sara, those tools also raise questions about copyright, fair compensation and environmental impact. She argues that regulation has a role in protecting artists and preserving the conditions artists need to develop their skills. She also asks how people can keep making their own decisions as AI takes on more tasks.
Those questions about people and their experiences run through Station Paradiso, her opera that premiered at Staatsoper Stuttgart on 10 May 2026. Sara interviewed more than 20 people about migration and the music that connected them to home. They shared life stories, cassettes and records. Their memories became the basis for an opera about belonging, told through nine people travelling together by bus.
Finally, the conversation looks ahead. Sara hopes future composers will still master their craft and have communities to draw on. She points to opera houses, theatres and concert halls as places where people can meet, share an experience and encounter perspectives beyond their own.
Watch the full Walk Your Talk episode with Sara Glojnarić on the CROZ YouTube channel.
You can also watch the episode with Sean Neary on fraud, risk and AI.
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