News - Slovenia: Quartissimo speak to esctoday.com | Eurovision Song Contest News - Azerbaijan 2012 

Quartissimo, the string quartet who represented Slovenia at last year's Eurovision Song Contest, is back. They performed their new song during the interval act of EMA 2010, which was held last weekend. We talked to Ziga Cerar, who plays the first violin, and asked him about Quartissimo's Eurovision memories and plans for the future.

You didn't qualify for last year's Eurovision final. How do you look back on your participation and how was the general reaction when you got back in Slovenia?

It was a great experience for us and we brought some nice memories back home. Overall, we were very satisfied with our performance and that's what matters. Actually, nobody really expected us to qualify for the final and therefore nobody blamed us. I think everybody back home thought we had done the best we could. Slovenia is such a small country and we don't profit from any diaspora in Europe; that might be one of the reasons why we didn't make it. Besides that, Eurovision is such a big lottery: you just never know what wil do well in the contest.

What do you think of this year's Slovene entry Narodno zabavni rock?

Well, at least it's something completely different than Love Symphony. I have no idea though if it will score well at the contest. Of course, I wish Anzambel Roka Žlindere & Kalamari the best of luck; lets hope Europe is ready for it.

What have you done after your participation at the Eurovision Song Contest?

Well, after winning EMA last year we did lots of promo concerts. Then, after the Eurovision Song Contest we felt we needed some time. We all have our careers and some of us were still studying. However, we started to come back together a few months later and we worked on some songs.

During this year's EMA final you performed a new song. Can you tell us something more about it?

Yes, our new song is called Carmensita. I composed it while a good friend of mine, Nino de Gleria, took care of the arrangements. The song contains some samples from other songs: it starts with a sample of a Serbian folk song called Ciganka sam mala (I'm a gipsy girl) and the French lyrics were taken from the opera Carmen by Bizet. My girlfriend, who's a professional opera singer, did the lead vocals and we think her voice suits the song very well. In the end we were all positively surprised by the result.

So what are your plans for the future?

In the next couple of weeks we're going to rerecord the song and then we hope to release it. We're going to work on a new album as well. We'd love to compose some of the songs ourselves, but other composers are welcome too of course. Besides that we would really like to do a tour later this year; it would be great if we could do some concerts abroad.

Is there any chance we will see Quartissimo back at EMA in the future?

No, I don't think so. We won it already, so I don't think we should do it again. It was great to take part last year, as we all strongly believed we would do well at EMA. It was a wonderful experience and it brought us a lot. Now we're ready for some new challenges.

You can listen to Quartissimo's new song Carmensita below: