Tonight, a whole six months before the Eurovision Song Contest 2015 in Vienna, the first song will be chosen. The country with the honour of kicking of this year’s Eurovision season is Macedonia, whose Skopje Festival will take place tonight at 20:15 CET live from the Metropolis Festival Hall in Skopje.
For the past few years, Macedonia has selected internally to mixed results, and tonight’s gala performance is the result of national broadcaster MRT asking the public their preferred method of selecting the country’s Eurovision entry.
Twenty songs and artists will compete for the Macedonian ticket to Eurovision, all of whom will sing in their native language and will be backed by a full concert orchestra, conducted by musical director Ljupcho Mirkovski. The voting will be a 50/50 combination of televoting and international juries (Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Croatia, The Netherlands, Romania and Turkey). The international juries cast their vote based on last night’s full dress rehearsal, which ran smoothly.
The show will be presented by Vasil Zagirchev with guest performances from Kaliopi (2012) and Karolina (2002 & 2007) both of whom will perform their Eurovision entries with full orchestra accompaniment. The most important performers of the night, however, are of course the twenty competing artists, who are listed in running order below:
- Lena Zatkoska – Alo
- Tanja Carovska – Ako mi se vratis
- Danijel Kajmakovski – Esenski lisja
- Vera Jankovik – Se plasham
- Risto Samardziev & Vlatko Ilievski – Sever-jug
- Evgenija Cancalova – Da ne te sakam
- Aleksandra Mihova – Srce cuva spomeni
- Lidija Kocovska & Marjan Stojanovski – Sonce niz oblaci
- Joce Panov – Ni lj od ljubovta
- Goran Naumovski & Sanja Kerkez – Mig bez tebe
- Aleksandar Tarabunov & Toni Mihajlovski – Marija
- Aleksandra Janeva – Vo tvojot svet
- Miyatta – Zaljuben
- Tamara Todevska – Brod sto tone
- Sanja Gjosevska – Sakam da letam
- Nade Talevska – Znam
- Viktorija Loba – Edna edinstvena
- Verica Pandilovska – Samo za tebe
- Nina Janeva – Bluz za…
- Dimitar Andonovski – Se shto ti vetiv
Join us here at Xtra for our first live blog of the 2015 season as we take you through the return of Skopje Fest!
