The votes for the fourth annual esctoday.com awards have been cast over the last three and a half weeks and now it is time to reveal the results. We continue with the Best male vocal performance award.

The 2009 esctoday.com Award for Best male vocal performance goes to…

• …Davor Ebner of Regina from Bosnia & Herzegovina
  
  

Davor Ebner is the lead singer of the band Regina that represented Bosnia & Herzegovina in the Eurovision Song Contest. They finished third in the first semi final and ninth in the final with the song Bistra voda.

• You can find the list of all award results revealed so far this year here.

The winner

This is the second esctoday.com award for Bosnia & Herzegovina following the victory in the Composer of the year category in 2006. It is still therefore the first award for the country in this category, which was formerly won by Roger Cicero (Germany) in 2007 and Boaz Mauda (Israel) in 2008. Please note that this category is both for soloists and lead singers of bands. There is also the category Best duo/group vocal performance, which is for bands with more than one lead vocalist.

Regina were founded in Sarajevo in1990 by the three instrumentalists Denis Cabric, Bojan Milicevic and Aleksandar Covic, who also writes the songs for the band. They started looking for a lead singer and after a long search, Davor Ebner was chosen. The band,whose songs are inspired by Irish rock band U2, enjoyed success all over the country. Whenthe civil war started, Regina escaped to Belgrade, where they continued their career and released six albums over the following years. In 2000, the band took a break when Aleksandar Covic started his solo career.

In 2006, Regina reunited when alloriginal members teamed up again for a radio festival in Serbia. They released a new albumcalled Sve mogu ja, whichturned out to be a success. In Janary 2009, it was announced that the band would represent Bosnia & Herzegovina in the Eurovision Song Contest and the song Bistra voda, another compositiosn by Aleksandar Covic,was the chosen song.

The complete results

This was one of the closest decisions. Davor Ebner, the only nominee in this category who got a nomination as the lead singer of a band rather than a soloist, won ahead of Alexander Rybak, this year's winner in the Best male performance category. There is a tie for third place between the representatives from Denmark and Lithuania; Belarusian singer Petr Elfimov closes the category.

1. Davor Ebner (Bosnia & Herzegovina) – 26.1%
2. Alexander Rybak (Norway) – 25.9%
3. Brinck (Denmark) – 17.3%
   Sasha Son (Lithuania) – 17.3%
4. Petr Elfimov (Belarus) – 13.5%

The winning performance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JudEsQHACog

esctoday.com interview with Regina in May 2009, prior to the Eurovision Song Contest

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgJsm44yhKw

The last award winners to be revealed tonight will be the ones in the Best duo/group vocal performance categories.