The rumour mill is swirling that Luca Hänni will sing for Switzerland at Eurovision 2019. And while that may or may not be true, we do know this: SRF is still searching for the perfect song for their act…whoever that may be.
Today Switzerland took another step in its Tel Aviv journey by publishing the names of their international jury that is made up of 21 experts. The international jury, along with a secret audience panel, have narrowed the songs down to a Top 5. These songs are now being tested with artists by music producers.
All of the experts — who include Eurovision faves like Ruth Lorenzo, Ovi and Tinkara Kovac — have taken part in Eurovision as a singer or a songwriter, or been a judge in the past. Switzerland is definitely moving forward to break their curse of not being in the Eurovision Song Contest final since 2014!
Selection update: The audience and expert juries have selected ? the Top 5 songs, which are now being tested by music producers with various artists ?. Then a next jury evaluation follows. The entry for #Switzerland will be announced in March. #ESC2019 #srfESC @SRF @Eurovision pic.twitter.com/4dao6PaFDT
— SRF ESC (@srfesc) November 16, 2018
Ovidiu Jacobsen is an artist, songwriter, musician and producer. He produced and wrote songs for the Eurovision Song Contest and even represented Romania twice together with Paula Seling, ending up 3rd with “Playing with Fire” and with a 13th place with “Miracle”. Furthermore, he was a judge in the Romanian ESC jury twice as well.
After being a judge in the German final, Ruth Lorenzo Pascual is back at it again for the Swiss. She, of course, is the Spanish participant from 2014 who finished in a solid 10th place with her power ballad “Dancing in the Rain”. While living in the UK, she was a finalist on The X Factor and is a singer as well as a songwriter.
Tinkara Kovac represented Slovenia in the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest as well, reaching the final and earning a 25th place finish with her song “Round and Round”. Besides her Eurovision participation, the flautist studied classical flute music at the university Conservatorio Giuseppe Tartini in Italy.
The rest of the jury is made up by a versatile group of Eurovision experts. What is conspicuous: There are plenty of judges from the international jury of the German final in 2018.
- Belgium: Typh Barrow (Singer, Songwriter, Coach at the Voice Belgium)
- Sweden: Maria Marcus (Songwriter, Producer, multiple platinum awards)
- Belarus: Leonid Shyrin (Songwriter, wrote for TV, movies and theatre)
- United Kingdom: Mark De Lisser (Chorister, Arranger, Vocal Coach)
- USA: Rennie Mirro (Awarded with Best Male Musical Artist 2005)
- Austria: Sasha Saedi (Producer, Manager at Universal Music Austria)
- Belarus: Alexey Gross (Singer, Musician, took part three times at the belarusian final)
- Hungary: Adrienn Zsédenyi (Singer, Producer, Actor, reached Gold and Platinum)
- Denmark: Anders Øhrstrøm (Composer, Producer, Sounddesigner, Vocal Coach, Singer)
- Italy: Deivydas Zvonkus (Producer, Songwriter, Composer, Arranger)
- Poland: Grzegorz Urban (Musical Director)
- Iceland: Helga Möller (Singer, represented Iceland at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1986)
- Armenia: Gore Melian (Singer, Songwriter, Composer, Producer)
- Lithuania: Rafailas Karpis (Opera singer, composer)
- Australia: Danielle Spencer (Singer, Songwriter, Actor)
- Cyprus: Argyro Christodoulidou (Composer, Pianist, Singer)
- The Netherlands: Gordon Groothedde (Producer, Composer)
- Sweden: Henrik Johnsson (Producer, Manager for many acts in Melfest)
A few months ago, Switzerland decided to select their entry internally for 2019.
The German-Swiss broadcaster announced in November that 420 songs have been received and a shortlist of five has been decided by the juries.
The next stage is for the selected songs to be matched with performers. The broadcaster will reveal the selected song in March.
What do you think about the international jury? Let us know in the comment section below!
The artist has already been selected and is not from Ticino. Sorry to Sebalter and Scilla fans.
When will the artist be revealed?
Just send SeBalter already 😀
Why is there an American judge?
Which one?
Wiwibloggs have SLEPT on the Albanian and French National Selection (France have 8 songs out) and FiK has a potential ESC winner
They’ve made articles about all of this.
Ruth and Tinkara were also both on German International panel last year, if I’m not mistaken…
Who are Deivydas Zvonkus? Why is he the italian judge?
He is a Lithuanian judge, actually 🙂
Wonderful! Ruth Lorenzo has great taste, so I hope she will choose Scilla’s entry 😀 I think I have never said before, that I like “Playground”, have I? 😀 HONESTLY guys, I am sorry for overacting and joking around, but seriously: Scilla looks special, has charisma and attitude, and the voice to shine on stage. I have a photo of her as my Smartphone background 😀
No , you’ve never said that ever , SMH
just to clarify, the voting is closed according to today’s tweet. the news about the top 5 songs being tested with different artists was published a month ago.
That’s three ESC 2014 alumni… Advantage Sebalter?
That sucks tbh