Last Saturday, Amsterdam became the Eurovision capital for one day. More than 20 Eurovision hopefuls in this year's Eurovision Song Contest took the stage in Amsterdam Marcanti to promote their entries to more than 1500 fans and press. Preliminary to the concert in Amsterdam, the artists were invited by the city of The Hague for an official welcome reception, a bustour and a visit to Madurodam.
Two delegation busses headed over to The Hague were the red carpet wasrolled outfor the artistsand more than 170 journalists and camera crews from all over Europe werewaiting in De Nieuwe Kerk. The international delegations were welcomed by the depute major of The Hague, Mr. Fits Huffnagel. Then Cornald Maas, Dutch commentator of the Eurovision Song Contest, introducedthis year'sDutch hopefuls De Toppersand theyperformed their entry Shine for all the guests. Right after that, all delegations took place in open busses for a city tour through The Hague, where loads of fans were waving flagsand supportedthe Eurovision representativeson the streets. During a visit to Madurodam, a miniature city which represents all the interesting sites of The Netherlands, journalists were able to conduct short interviews with the artists. At 4 pm the artists went back to Amsterdam to have dinner and to do soundchecks.
Due to the late arrival of the Belgian delegation the concert started half an hour later than scheduled. In the meantime, hundreds of fans were waiting outside of the venue already for what was going to become the biggest Eurovision Promo Event ever! Theconcert's kick off was done by thehosts of the evening, Marga Bult and Maggie MacNeal, who treated the audience with their Eurovision entries Amsterdam and Rechtop in de wind, while more than 1500 fans and press were singing along.
All of the artists were introduced shortly by the hosts and Cornald Maas, before taking the stage. The running order was as follows: Albania, Slovakia, Moldova, Slovenia, Lithuania, Serbia, Ireland, Denmark, Cyprus, Belgium, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Iceland, Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ukraine, Poland, Armenia, Malta, Spain and United Kingdom. Unfortunately the Romanian and Belarussian representatives had to cancel for the show. Elena suffered from a flu and Petr from Belarus had an internal conflict with the Belarussian broadcaster. Overall, all of the 21 acts were very well received by the cheerful audience.
Theconcert was covered by many national and international press and camera crews. Reuters, world's biggest press agency covered the event and even the Russian news broadcasted highlights of the concert. Of course the Dutch media was all over the event as well, which was covered by many tv station and covered by all newspapers.
Here you can see some pictures of several performing artists and the first video images. In the next few days we will show you more video material of the concert.
- You can findthe gallery with pictures here.
Andrea Demirovic – Just get out of my life (Montenegro):
Nelly Ciobanu – Hora din Moldova (Moldova):
Many thanks to the schlagerboys for the video material and to our partnersitewww.songfestival.web-log.nl for the pictures.
Eurovision in Concert was organised by www.esctoday.com, www.songfestival.web-log.nl, OGAE Netherlands, www.bearecords.nl, café Rouge and Mucho More.
