Czech Republic: ESCZ 2023 lineup revealed

ESCZ 2023: Monday 30 January at 21:00 CET live from Prague

• Maella

• Markéta Irglová

• Pam Rabbit

• RODAN

• Vesna

Voting will open during the show via the Eurovision app, and will close on Monday 6 February, with the winner announced shortly after.

The winner will be decided purely by public vote (70% weighting given to international audiences and 30% Czech audiences). This marks the first time in 15 years that the Czech Republic will use a live show to determine their Eurovision Song Contest participant. 

International audiences will be able to watch ESCZ 2023 via a live stream on the official Eurovision Song Contest YouTube channel, while Czech audiences can watch via broadcaster ČT’s streaming platform iVysílání.

The production team is made up of heavyweights in the Czech entertainment industry, lead by Head Of Production Cyril Hirsch, with Michal Utíkal, Lucie Kapounová, and Viktor Průša. Direction will be led by Vít Bělohradský and Matyáš Vorda.

Let's take a look at the artists…

Maella

Growing up in Prague, the daughter of a local jazz musician, Maella would often visit the dimly lit, smoke-filled basement jazz bars in the city center. 

Watching bands through a glowing haze of the cigarette smoke that thickened throughout the night, she found herself feeling like she was listening alone, trapped in the aura of the music.

Moving to London at the age of 20, she started developing her own production skills. Maella's period of sonic reinvention, lead her to refine her dark alt-pop sound to much acclaim. 

Each of the three previous singles have been played on BBC Introducing in London, with Jess Iszatt ‘falling in love’ with her ‘stunning’ sound and providing her with a Featured Artist slot. 

Maella is October’s ambassador for Spotify Equals CZ&SK, her image splashed all over Times Square.

Markéta Irglová

Markéta Irglová is an Academy Award winning musician and actor born in Valasske Mezirici in the Czech Republic. At seven years Markéta began learning the piano as this had been her mother Jana’s own unfulfilled childhood dream.

In 2006, Markéta was approached by Irish musician Glen Hansard of the band The Frames to collaborate on music for a small Irish film he had been asked to score. The film was called Once and was being made by The Frames one-time bassist and Glen’s friend, John Carney and won an Academy Award for best original song (Falling Slowly). Since then, she has lived in Ireland, USA and now lives in Iceland, where in 2022 she competed in Söngvakeppnin - the Icelandic national final.

She has released 3 solo albums Anar (2011), MUNA (2014) and LILA (2022).

Pam Rabbit

Pam Rabbit is a Czech singer with Armenian roots. She doesn't consider herself a musician as much as a creator who does a little bit of everything involving music. Therefore, directing music videos has also become a great passion of hers and she sees them as a refinement of how she meant her song. 

Her work is inspired by her fictional haunting, yet humorous, tragic world, which helps her understand, explain, and cope with the real one. 

The main goal of her work is to be able to let the listener know they're not the only one who doesn't understand what's really going on, and to offer support, laughter, and sometimes tears.

She is known in the Eurovision world since she was a backing vocalist to Mikolas Josef in 2018 at Eurovision in Lisbon and has competed twice on ESCZ in 2019 and 2020. 

She is very fond of animals. Hence the name Pam Rabbit.

RODAN 

With his first ever single Gone, he rose to the top of the charts in Czech radio stations at the turn of 2021, where he was subsequently nominated for Discovery of the Year 2021 and included among the 50 hopefuls of Czech music according to the influential music magazine Headliner.

Even then it was very clear that RODAN was a name to remember - confirmed with the release of his debut album Glasses Off in 2022, on which he balances between contemporary pop and indie folk with sympathetic ease and captivating intimacy and subtlety in the excellent production of Jan Čechtice (Ohm Square).
 

Vesna

Vesna is a band led by singer-songwriter Patricie Fuxova. During their tenure, the band has released two albums, including duets with Vojta Dyk and František Černý (Čechomor). In 2019, Vesna received a nomination for the Anděl Awards and was chosen as a support act by the Scandinavian singer Aurora.

Vesna's music uses elements of folklore set to modern pop, creating her characteristic combination of dreamy and lively music on stage. The band's permanent members come from the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Russia.

Kryštof Šámal, Head of Delegation for the Czech Republic, said: ’The level of the songs and artists; and also, the essence of ESCZ to share the talent and diversity in our music scene made it not very had but impossible to select 3 finalists therefore we are happy to reveal the 5 finalists that will compete to represent us in Liverpool.’

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