Slovak TV has kindly supplied this information on their entry "Modlitba" (A Prayer) sung by Katarína Hasprová

Katarína Hasprová

Katarína Hasprová was born on 10 September 1972 in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia.
Music, dance and acting are deeply rooted in her family. Her mother is one of the prominent Slovak actresses, as well as a gifted singer, her father is a leading director of theatre and television.
A graduate in musicals from the Janácek Music Academy, Katarína devotes all her time to singing and dancing.
She performed live in a number of famous musicals, singing Anita in the "West Side Story", Scheila in "Hair" , Dracula`s princess in "Dracula" , as well as the narrator in Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat".
In June 1997 she won the International Song Contest "Bratislavská Lýra" with her song "A Good-bye". Following an agreement between Slovak Television and the "Bratislavská Lýra" festival, the best placed Slovak singer qualified to represent the country in the EUROVISION SONG CONTEST 1998. Through her victory Katarína made her way to Birmingham.

Gabriel Dusik, a graduate of piano, composition and singing, one of the most gifted young Slovak composers, wrote the Slovak entry to EUROVISION SONG CONTEST 1998.
He began his musical career by setting up a rock-group Gravis in 1979. The group played a key role in the Slovak pop music till the end of eighties.
In recent years Dusik devotes most of his time to song writing and music production, being the author of lyrics as well. ,.He released his own records with Slovak as well as foreign publishers like BMG, EMI, POLYGRAM. Many of his songs were leading the Slovak pop charts.
As a producer he was awarded 1 platinum and 4 gold discs since 1993.
He took part in the SCYPE International Contest in 1996 where his song was placed 6Th.

Anna Wepperyová has written the lyrics to the Slovak entry.
Over the past couple of years she has been working closely with Gabo Dusik on a number of his musical projects.
Writing lyrics is only part of the rich spectrum of her activities, ranging from scientific research, through teaching up to translating books.

Vladimir Valovic - conductor of the Slovak entry
Vladimir Valovic, born on 9th May 1945, will conduct the Slovak entry in Birmingham.
Since early childhood he has devoted himself to music. At the Music School in Bratislava he specialized in trumpet and music directing. He started working at Czech Radio in Brno as Director of Music, then moved to Bratislava where he set up the VV SYSTEM jazz orchestra composed of the most acclaimed musicians. Together they participated in jazz festivals all over Europe and made a number of recordings for radio and TV, having released 5 LPs.
In 1983 he became the conductor of BIG BAND RADIO BRATISLAVA.
In 1993 he started working with the renowned Gustav Brom Orchestra. A few years later he became its conductor, released two jazz CDs, made over 100 concerts in Slovakia and abroad, was involved in production of numerous music programmes for television.

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