Katalena

Katalena deals with the folk music legacy of the Slovene region, recreating and performing it in its own way with a basic presumption that folk music is timeless and vital. Katalena's goal is to revive this tradition, to give it a wave of fresh energy, to pull it out of the dusty national subconsciousness and to publish it in a way that is at ease and unburdened. There are not many experiments of this kind in Slovenia and the result has been a positive surprise. Katalena has created a very special mixture of rhythms, temperament, of the old with the new. In their music heritage rock and ethno rhythms meet. A dash of jazz is added. In short: when making rearrangements, basically everything is allowed.

The band members met quite accidentally in the Slovene countryside village of Črmošnjice in Bela krajina in Summer 2001. Coming from different musical backgrounds - from more or less classic rock (Sfiltrom, Terra mystica, Bast), folk (Terrafolk), blues (Moj boogie band) and trip hop (Melodrom) - its musicians experimented for a week with several old Slovene folk tunes they had discovered in the archives of the Institute of Ethnomusicology. Soon they had grown into a regular music group, gaining quite a lot of attention in a very short time. They made their first public appearance in December 2001 at the Novi rock (New Rock) festival in Ljubljana, and their first individual concert was (to everyone's surprise) completely sold out. Since 2001 they have released three albums - (Z)godbe (2002), Babje leto (2004) and Kmečka ohcet (2006). Katalena have appeared at all major festivals and venues in Slovenia - Novi Rock Festival, Druga Godba Festival, Lent Festival, Rock Otočec - Festival Novo mesto, Carniola Festival, Mediterranean Festival, Izola, Trnfest Festival - and have also performed at several concerts abroad - in Switzerland (Alpentone Festival), Hungary, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, France and Croatia (European Broadcasting Union Festival). In February 2006 they played the Gallus Hall of Cankarjev dom, the biggest concert hall in Slovenia, and in July 2006 they performed at the Rudolstadt Folk Festival in Germany. Some songs from their albums became 'Song of the Week' on national public radio, while a few Katalena videos took prime position in the Slovene video charts. In 2007 Katalena released a new singel called Pastirče mlado and started a successful collaboration with the group of ballet dancers from Slovene National Theatre (SNG) Maribor. Besides several performances there is also Katalena's 8th music video for Pastirče mlado, showing the fusion of music and the art of dancing. For 2008 Katalena is preparing to release their 4th album. The Katalena line-up currently comprises Vesna Zornik (vocal), Polona Janežič (keyboards, backing vocals), Tibor Mihelič (bass, backing vocals), Boštjan Narat (guitar, mandolin, backing vocals), Robert Rebolj (drums, percussion) and Boštjan Gombač (clarinet, flutes, percussion, backing vocals).

Katalena

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