While other countries are in the process of preparing for their national final, Switzerland is busy choosing its representative behind-closed-doors in an internal selection. And as part of that the Swiss broadcaster SRF has now revealed the names of the expert jury. These 21 musical experts will judge the submissions together with a 100-member audience panel. The musical experts include Ruth Lorenzo and Tinkara Kovac and Ovidiu Jacobsen.
SRF published the names of the expert jury together with a video explaining how the process works. All members are high-class experts and many of them have a close relationship to Eurovision.
Switzerland’s expert jury for its internal Eurovision selection
- Adrienn Zsédenyi (Hungary) singer and actor
- Alexey Gross (Belarus) singer
- Anders Øhrstrøm (Denmark) composer, producer and vocal coach
- Argyro Christodoulides (Cyprus) pianist and musician
- Deivydas Zvonkus (Lithuania) producer, songwriter and composer
- Einar Bardarson (Iceland) songwriter and talent-manager
- Florent Luyckx (The Netherlands) marketing director of Zomba Records
- Gordon Groothedde (The Netherlands) composer and producer
- Gore Melian (Armenia) singer-songwriter
- Grzegorz Urban (Poland) pianist
- Helga Möller (Iceland) singer
- Henrik Johnsson (Sweden) manager and producer
- Jennifer O’Brien (Ireland) journalist
- Leonid Shyrin (Belarus) composer
- Maria Marcus (Sweden) songwriter and producer
- Ovidiu Jacobsen (Norway/Romania) singer, songwriter and producer
- Pete Watson (UK) musical director and keyboarder
- Rafailas Karpis (Lithuania) opera-singer
- Ruth Lorenzo Pascual (Spain) singer
- Sasha Saedi (Austria) manager of Universal Music Austria and producer
- Tinkara Kovač (Slovenia) singer and flautist
Interestingly, SRF re-invited many jurors from last year. Seventeen of the 21 experts helped Switzerland choose Luca Hänni ahead of Tel Aviv. With the best Swiss result in over 25 years, there was little need to replace a lot of the decision-makers.
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.
Ovidiu Jacobsen is back at the Swiss selection too. He produced and wrote heaps of songs and performed at the contest twice himself with Paula Seling, ending up in third with “Playing with Fire” and in 13th place with “Miracle”. He was a judge in the Romanian ESC jury twice as well. The innovator of the round keyboard and double glass-piano sure has an eye for innovative acts and ideas.
Helga Möller (member of Icytrio, Iceland 1986) and Alexey Gross (who participated three times in the Belarussian selection) are also on the panel. They join a list of producers, managers and directors.
Switzerland’s selection process for Eurovision 2020
The names of the expert-jury may be revealed, but a statement on the chosen act is still a while away. Last week SRF confirmed that no announcement will be made until March. That means we’ll know the successor of Luca Hänni just before the deadline on March 9th.
But the expert jury shares its power with a 100-member audience panel. One of them is Marcel Eberhard, who gave a little insider’s scoop on how the process works. A total of three rounds took place, where they listened to songs. The first one took up to two hours. He’s very positive about the quality of the entries and liked every song he listened to. The emphasis has been placed on the total package: song and artist have to work together.
For the next few weeks, the 100-member audience panel and the international expert jury will rate both the song submissions and artists. The two panels will also make the final decision as to the lucky artist and song that will make it to Eurovision. The audience panel and expert jury will have a 50/50 vote split.
What do you think about the chosen jurors? Do you think Switzerland is on track to repeat Luca Hänni’s result? Tell us in the comments below!
Read more Switzerland Eurovision news here
[…] panel and a 20-person international expert jury rated both the song submissions and artists. SRF revealed the 20 individuals making up the jury in December of last year. The list contained several familiar faces from the […]
Eurovision 2014 artists are the best, they always judge …:)
You know, “She Got Me” this year only made me realize how amazing “Fuego” actually is.
I like them both, but I’ve relistened to She Got Me much more than Fuego.
Those three were also on the Swiss selection team last year, and Ruth, Tinkara, and a bunch of the other folks here were also on Germany’s selection jury the last two years. Do they get paid or are they just happy to do it?
Who cares ???
Eurovision is a business. These “international experts” are consultants. Why are you surprised? It’s like athletes contracting trainers.
I wasn’t saying anything accusatory. I just find it interesting and I like learning how these selections work.