A colourful start for Latvia

Latvia were the first delegation to arrive in Baku in the early hours of Saturday morning, and received a warm welcome at the airport. They even managed an impromptu performance of a traditional folk song from Azerbaijan, Sari Gelin that Anmary and her team had prepared in advance.

Backstage with Anmary

Anmary was lucky enough to have a free day yesterday and told us "We managed to do some sightseeing in the city, I met with Safura who performed for Azerbaijan in Eurovision, and we visited the markets in the heart of Baku."

Beautiful Song is a story of a girl who achieves her ambition of worldwide fame, and has the cynical lyric where Anmary promises cheekily to one day call Sir Mick Jagger back, when she has time!. We asked her if he had managed to do this yet. She adds "No, I haven't managed that yet, but someday i'll call him back, we were just given our SIM cards !."

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Kaleidoscope of colour on stage

For Latvia's first stage rehearsal, Anmary was joined by four female backing singers who all move freely around the stage with Anmary taking the lead in the choreography. The actual costumes for the First Semi-Final were not revealed today, so we will have a little while longer to wait.

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The LED screens are very retro and colourful, giving off a kaleidoscope effect as they interchange and rotate throughout the performance.

Anmary delivers a confident run through of the rehearsal, and her team also seemed pleased with the way things had progressed today. 

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Another beautiful song

Anmary arrived at her press conference holding a large Latvian flag. She introduced her team and revealed that one of the members on the team, Līga Robežniece was a veteran from the successful Marie N campaign of 2002, when Latvia won Europe's Favourite TV Show. Anmary said "She is our lucky charm!." 

When asked why she changed her name to Anmary from Linda for her stage performance. She added "It's a tradition in the church in Latvia to give a name of a saint so I was born Linda Anmary."

A journalist from Azerbaijan asked Anmary and her team to perform for the press, the same traditional song that she did at the airport, Sari Gelin. They did this with guitar accompaniment, and it went down a storm in the press centre, especially with the local media. The press conference moderator described it as "another beautiful song!".

Press are treated to another rendition

Anmary used to be a vocal coach, and was asked if she was still doing this and answered "Right now i'm just singing, I have a three year old child, so I don't give any lessons any more. I do have rules that I set for myself from my teaching days, but I will keep them as a secret for now."

The press conference was rounded off by Anmary and her team singing a jolly Latvian folk song, which had the assembled press clapping along and tapping their feet.

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