In the press conference held today in Baku, ITV presented officially 19 year old Aysel Teymurzadeh, the country's second representative in the Eurovision Song Contest. The young singer states she is confident she can win the contest in Moscow as she feels she is stronger than the singers from the other countries announced so far.

As reported by the Azeri Press Agency (APA), during the press conference RnB singer Aysel stated“I shall do my best to raise the Azerbaijani flag to the sky. I am certain I will come first”, she continued, “because I feel the strength in me! Now I know some of my rivals (for Moscow) and I feel I am stronger than all of them!” she concludes. So far, Greece, Albania, the Netherlands , Turkey, Israeland Bosnia and Herzegovina haveannounced their entrants.

Aysel was born in 1989 in Baku in a family of University professors. She studied music, the piano in particular at the Baku Music School. In 2006, she won the Pohre music contest. Between 2005 and 2006 she lived in Texas, USA, where she won three gold medals in Youth Song Contests which were held in the Southern Arkansas University, Arkansas, USA. Upon her return to Azrbaijan, she took part in the"Yeni Ulduz 4 talent show. Currently she is a student of Azerbaijan University of Languages, department of International Relations

Aysel’s project will be again this year promoted by Ukrainian Euromedia who were responsible for the promotion of Day after day.Mrs Aliyeva of ITV praised the singer’s appearance, her voice, charisma, dance ability as well as her general knowledge and command of foreign languages.

The singer was internally selected. "I like the fact that this year iTV works on the principle of doing the job first and announcing the results after that, and not the other way around. This approach gave us opportunity to choose the artist and song that will be best qualified to represent Azerbaijan at the biggest European song contest in May 2009, and do that avoiding any direct or indirect pressure from producers and other interested persons," said Farhad Badalbayli.

The song with which Aysel will fly the Azebaijani flag will be presented in mid March and it will be chosen from an open call for songs expiring next week. Whether there will be a national final like in 2008 or whether the song will be internally selected as well it has not been made known yet."Now we are working actively to select the song for representative of Azerbaijan for the Eurovision 2009," said the Head of Azeri Delegation Adil Kerimli, "We are doing everything to ensure high quality of the selection and choose a worthy song for AySel to represent Azerbaijan in Moscow".

Very special thanks to Nathan Guven for his assistance.

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