Romanian representative for the 51st Eurovision Song Contest, Mihai Traistariu, has finalised the preparations for his European Tour.
Full dates and details of the tour are expected to be announced this week. The tour is already known to cover countries such as Malta, France, Greece, Cyprus, Monaco, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Croatia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Moldova. All in all, Mihai will visit around 14 countries, starting on the 20th of April.
At the moment, Mihai is about to embark on a national tour sponsored by Cosmote, the main sponsor of Eurovision Song Contest in Athens. This national tour starts on 7th of April and ends on the 16th, and will take the singer to the main 10 cities of Romania.
International airplay
Tornero is already receiving airplay on some European radio hit lists, such as in Bulgaria, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Turkey and Greece. There are already two disco and club remixes and these versions of the song are already being played on dancefloors in Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Germany, France, Belgium and Greece.
Mihai is also preparing an international videoclip of the song due to the fact that the song has already been downloaded from different international sites on the internet. For this reason, his record company decided to broadcast the song all over the Europe. The costs of the international videoclip will be about 50,000 euros. In a week, the original song and the two remixes will cover at least 16 countries.
An epic career
Mihai has sold, to date, 1.5 million of his seven albums in Romania alone. He has 16 videoclips and made 1500 appearances all over the world. He has featured in roughly 3000 articles in Romanian newspapers and magazines, and been a poster boy in around 50 music magasines like Bravo, Popcorn, Cool Girl, Fun and Fans. He has 11 major funclubs in Romania, numbering up to 24,000 fans or more. He appeared on 43 cover magazines during the 5 years of his career.
Mihai has toured extensively in Japan, Canada, U.S.A., Germany, France, Belgium, Austria, Moldova and Bulgaria. He has taken part in six international festivals and won five Grand Prix, in Serbia & Montenegro , FYR Macedonia , Bulgaria , Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Latvia. Additionally, he was the winner of four special awards in Belarus (Slaviansky Bazar 2002).
He was elected The Best Male Voice in Romania three years in a row, and has achieved 11 top ten hits in the country. Five of his songs were number one hits on radio and in clubs: Money and girls , To the see, to the sun, Banana, Why, and How beautiful you are. Last year, his song How beautiful you are was number one for five weeks on every radio station and TV channel in Romania, and stayed in the charts for an amazing 32 weeks. Unsurprisingly, then, Mihai was nominated in March 2006 for Best Male – 2005 and The hit of the year – 2005.
His new album (his eighth) will be on the market in one month and as expected, will include the song Tornero. The album will have about 16 new songs in all, half of them in English.
Male Mariah Carey
Mihai is often reffered to as The Male version of Mariah Carey or 5 octaves, because of his great vocal range (billed as the only male in the world who can sing 5 octaves!). Last year he was contacted by the TV Show Guiness Book of World Records to join the show and the contest for the Greatest Range of a Male Voice.
Siegel's seal of approval
After winning the first place on this year Romania's national final , Mihai 's managers and producers were contacted by the great German producer and composer Ralph Siegel, the writer of this year's Swiss song by six4one, and long-time manager of Jupiter Records in Germany. Siegel believes that the song Tornero has the best chances to win this year's Eurovision Song Contest, so he has formed a contract to his company to promote the song in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and other countries. Ralph himself represented Germany 14 times in all, winning the contest with Nicole in 1982.
Mihai believes that his international career has just started. We wish him good luck for Athens !
