Born in Jajce in 1962 when Bosnia was still a part of Yugoslavia, from an early age Leonardo yearned to discover the unknown lands on the “other side of the mountain.” Gradually forging his own path with serendipity on his side, this polyglot citizen of the world relocated to Italy and in 1990 to NYC, and went on to build an improbably successful one-man international music enterprise in defiance of standard music-biz practice – remarkably, with no concession of excellence and imagination. Along the way, he gathered around himself an ever-expanding constellation of adventurous musicians ranging from gifted lesser-known talents to such zeitgeist-defining figures as drum exemplar Bill Bruford, who hailed Leonardo’s abilities as an “enabler” of aspiring musicians, and guitar avatar Allan Holdsworth, who affectionately dubbed him “Nardini” and his singular approach to life “Nardinism.”

In 2019, 39 years after he’d left Bosnia for distant shores, Leonardo tramped back over the mountain to Jajce to present a concert featuring MoonJune musicians Dwiki Dharmawan (Indonesia), Kamal Musallam (Palestine), Asaf Sirkis (Israel), and Boris Savoldelli (Italy). He and the assembled musicians met with an extended ovation by townspeople and municipal officials appreciative of the global connections he’d forged with their home. That homecoming concert, organized by lifelong friend and fellow son of Jajce Borislav Kresojevic, set the table for the 1st International MoonJune Music Festival, again organized by Borislav, sponsored by the town, and free to all in Jajce’s spectacular waterfall park and public square.