Tinkara Kovač
Tinkara Kovač is a musician, singer, professional flautist and music and lyricist. Since her first single Veter z juga/Wind from the South, Tinkara first recorded two albums with ZKP RTV Slovenija Records (Ne odhaja poletje/Summer Doesn't Bid Goodbye and Košček neba/A Piece of Sky).In 2001, she moved to Dallas Records and released three more studio albums (Na robu kroga/At the Edge of a Circle, O-range and aQa). One of them (O-range) was released as an international version in Italy (EMI) and also in Croatia (Dallas). With Dallas Records, Tinkara also released the single (Spezzacuori); a special project in four languages which was co-produced in conjunction with the Friuli record label Numar Un; and a Best Of compilation. In 2012, she released another album with Dallas Records, a special project with ex-Yugoslavian songs arrangements.
Tinkara Kovač has in her 15 years of active music career received numerous awards (First Prize at the 1997 Melodies of the Sea and the Sun festival in Portorož, Slovenia, 8 Golden Roosters in 1998, Gold and Platinum awards for all of her albums. She was the runner-up at the 1999 Eurovision Song Contest pre-selection in Slovenia, the best video-clip and song at the 2000 TV MP3 NOW contest in London, her original music Reason Why was amongst the top ten at the 2003 ISC contest...)
Together with numerous and diverse music bands, Tinkara had played more than 800 gigs in Slovenia, Croatia, Austria and Italy. For her, her most prominent international collaborations on stage or in the studio were those with Ian Anderson (Jetrho Tull), Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin), Carlos Nuñez, Dan Lavery, Massimo Bubola, Bungaro and Paul Millns.
In January 2013 and under her own record label NAI, Tinkara released a special project with lullabies and musical bed-time stories in dialects of Slovenian and Croatian Istria, Friuli Venezia Gulia and the Slovenian Coast and Karst Region entitled "Zazibanke/Lullabies". She was elected the President of the Villenica Association in June, 2013; and later, on July 6th performed at the 33rd edition of The Melodies of the Sea and the Sun Festival with Mars in Venera/Mars and Venus song which she wrote in collaboration with Gaber Radojevič and Lea Sirk. She was awarded the Best Performance and the Main Prize respectively.
About the composer
Raay is one of most successful songwriters and producers in Slovenia. He made his first prominent steps in his music career as a producer-writer 11 years ago with Slovenia's first "Popstars" and "Idol" projects. Afterwards he collaborated with various artists from different music genres, and as a singer in two music groups, Turbo Angels and Tangels respectively. He won major prizes at several Slovenian music festivals in past years. Raay was also a producer and the main songwriter for the latest album by Nusa Derenda, Slovenia's best entry in ESC (2001, Copenhagen). Although he tried his hand in various styles of songs at the beginning of his career, Raay in 2009 decided to create "Team Raay", focusing their efforts on an analysis of worldwide "chart oriented" music market, and in producing music which could compete with international hits on Slovenian radio airplay charts. Since 2010, his songs have won the top 20 spots on Slovenia's official airplay charts. For the fourth year, Raay is a songwriter and producer with the largest share of songs within the top 20 of Slovenia airplay charts.
With these references he was also able to enter the world's second largest music market, namely Japan and the general Asian market. Last year, his team was noticed by one of Asia's most important record labels. Raay used the same approach of market analysis as at home, and is now one of most promising developing music writers in Japan. Some of his songs have already appeared on albums reaching No1 on the Japanese Billboard.
As a manager and executive producer, Raay has been presenting different artists, and is as a "talent scout" and the Raay Production A&R are always open for new talent.
Raay is no stranger to EMA, the Slovenian Eurovision Song pre-selection festival. In 2004, 2008, 2010, 2011 and in 2014, he participated with various degrees of success with various artists and songs. He was a member of the jury panel in the "Misija Evrovizija"/Mission Eurovision talent show in 2012, where they'd chosen Slovenia's 2012 entry Eva Boto, and was also a member of Slovenian jury panel for ESC 2012 and 2013.
