Katalena
Mojca Zupanič, Manager
Phone386 (0) 41 924 515
Contact
Past Events
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21 Jun 2023
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1 Jun 2017
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19 Dec 2016
A concert by Katalena, supported by the Slovenian Culture and Information Centre, Vienna (SKICA), Embassy of the Republic of Slovenia Vienna,
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5 Sep 2015
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7 Aug 2015
Background
In the summer of 2001, the band members met rather accidentally in an idyllic village in the Southeast of Slovenia. Coming from different musical backgrounds like rock (Sfiltrom, Bast), folk (Terrafolk), blues (Moj boogie band) and trip hop (Melodrom), the musicians then experimented for a week with several old Slovene folk tunes they had discovered in the archives of the Institute of Ethnomusicology.
After that, they've gained quite some attention in a very short time, and their first public appearance in December 2001 at the Novi Rock (New Rock) festival in Ljubljana was, to everyone's surprise, completely sold out.
Performances
Katalena has played all major festivals and venues in Slovenia, including the prestigious Druga Godba Festival, where they've been invited to play 4 times up until now. Other festivals include Lent Festival, Rock Otočec, Carniola Festival, Mediterranean Festival, Izola, Trnfest Festival, Zmaj 'ma mlade Festival, Days of Poetry and Wine Festival and Kamfest.
In 2009 they've sold out the Gallus Hall in Cankarjev dom with a special event including 13 ballet dancers. That same year, as a part of Animateka Festival, the band also did a audio-visual concert that featured a crew of Slovene animators, who created short animated films based on their songs. Another of their performances in this explorative vein is their Enci benci Katalenci show (also debuting in Cankarjev dom in 2015), which was created explicitly for children.
Katalena also has an enviable list of performances abroad, having playedplayed in New York, Switzerland, Hungary, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Israel and Croatia.
Members and their solo works
The Katalena line-up has remained the same since their beginning and consists of 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 and more).
Other members are all extremely productive outside Katalena as well. Boštjan Narat is highly successful as a singer-songwriter, Vesna Zornik released her tango oriented solo album TangoApasionada in 2010, Polona Janežič plays keyboards in Melodrom, and Boštjan Gombač, undoubtedly one of the most active Slovene musicians, was in recent years a main performer in the cabaret Patty Diphusa – Izpovedi porno dive [Confessions of Porno Diva], a theatre show directed by Ivana Djilas, with whom the band has also collaborated.
Discography
Katalena releases are quite diverse and often concept-driven. This 2002 début firmly established their further musical attitude towards modern song covers of Slovene traditional folk music, which they continued on the second album Babje leto (2004). Kmečka ohcet (2006) featured songs that have a lyrical connection to weddings and wedding-related themes, and Cvik cvak! (2008) reached further into exploring folk heritage and awakened Resian folk music (Resia is Slovene community living in a remote area close to the border in Italy, known for its specific culture, language and folk heritage). Their 2015 release, Enci benci Katalenci, remodelled children's songs in such a way that it was equally appealing to children as well as the more 'demanding' audiences.
External links
Gallery
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Deftly fusing various idioms of popular music with the legacies of Slovenian folklore culture, Katalena are certainly amongst the more curious rock collectives in Slovenia. +
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