Katarina Avbar at SiTi Teater! (2012)

Arhiv Arhiv Last updated 11 June 2026

Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik

Location: Ljubljana / SiTi Teater / Slovenia
Concert date: 23.10.2012
Attendance: 120
Ticket price: 15,00€

Until this day I had no idea that the Mercurius hall and SiTi Teater had such a lovely room, tailor-made for more intimate get-togethers devoted to soaking up gigs where organically ringing harmonies reign and acoustics call the shots. Many of those who found themselves at SiTi Teater this evening didn’t know it either, since it was their first time here too.

The concert by Slovenian singer-songwriter Katarina Avbar, who gave birth to her studio debut »Beležnica« last November, is the herald of a new concert series in which, over the coming months, several other prominent names of Slovenian singer-songwriter music, as well as other performers who build their musical legacy on heavy use of acoustics, are due to present their own creations on the stage of SiTi Teater.

Unlike Katarina Avbar’s show in the second half of May this year at Stari Glej in the heart of old Ljubljana, we found ourselves in a completely different ambience, which gave the audience a brand new concert experience, even though we’re talking about the same performer. The spacious stage welcomed the duo of Katarina Avbar and Peter Dekleva about 20 minutes past eight in the evening. As expected, the two musicians, draped in the festive curtain of a few twinkling spotlights on the ceiling, opened the show with Med besedo in molkom. The first four songs alone win you over completely with the power of their arrangements, an excellent combination of lead melodies, and above all the convincing strength of Katarina Avbar’s finely crafted, sensual and extremely subtle interpretation of the verses, which in the opening stretch captivated especially in Klobuk – an outstanding solution for Katarina’s chorus melody (using one single word) and after it in Tja, which touched hearts especially deeply with its fragile, tender softness and hidden longing.

The central part of the concert was spiced up by the arrival of drummer Robert Rebolj and keyboardist Peter Kocan. Next came the gorgeous Oz, before which Katarina Avbar talked a bit about the song, and her great fondness for the soundtrack of the famous film »The Wizard of Oz«. After Oz, the quartet played V odsotnosti nečesa, the freshly released second single off »Beležnica« that has finally opened the door to frequent radio rotation for Katarina too, and then closed out this stretch with Sence in prah and, after it, the album’s first single »Beležnica« – the vividly cheeky Igor, where the verses are packed with wordplay rhyming on the »Red Cross« (which is exactly why Katarina caught people’s attention with this song during »Red Cross Week«)! Igor stands out in the repertoire for its especially firm dynamic axis, the contrasting pairing of a rhythmic backbone with Katarina’s intense emphasis on the verses, which the singer also drove home by playing with her whole body! In other words, depending on the type of song, Katarina sings with her entire body at times. That way the verses gain even more power as a statement, and the written word of poetry really does come alive on stage in all its tangible substance. That very element didn’t come across as strongly at Stari Glej, where we were packed in, musicians included, like sardines, as it did this time at SiTi Teater. Katarina is certainly an old hand on the stage, so she knows body language very well and skillfully weaves it into the delivery of poetry, even though she has only been seriously establishing herself on stage as a singer-songwriter over the past year.

After Igor the concert carried on in the duo lineup of Katarina and Peter! Before Ali veste, Katarina told the crowd that the lyrics of the song were written by Bojan Tomažič, and added that she’d forgotten to mention before Klobuk that the lyrics of Klobuk are also the work of another author, Aleš Štegar. In Ali veste Peter also got more room for his typical guitar juggling, which led the song, inconspicuously yet extremely skillfully, across a harmonious extended bridge of improvisation into ALI- Ali. The latter called for a slightly longer stretch of improvisation still; Peter, with his incisive, exploratory genius, simply had to steer the song into an extended ending that hadn’t been planned at first. The audience met the ending with thunderous applause of delight, and Katarina appeared on stage again, having completely changed her stage outfit during her absence. Next came Ne reci nič, this time without Vesna Zornik (Katalena), and a delightfully inspired duo rendition by Katarina and Peter of Somewhere Over the Rainbow, the evergreen everybody knows from »The Wizard of Oz«. After the endearingly relaxed closer Pesek v oči, with both of them theatrically sitting on the very edge of the stage with their legs dangling, the picturesque presentation of Katarina’s even more picturesque debut »Beležnica« finally came to an end. Well, at least its regular part.

The show earned thunderous ovations and the crowd demanded the obligatory encore. The quartet appeared on stage once more and played Igor in full again, and the second time around it sounded even livelier, with an even bigger mood contrast between black humor and dramatic moment. In this second rendition too, the band was kept company on stage by the puppet »Igor«, which, Katarina said jokingly, was declared at one edition of the Kantfest festival to resemble the legendary Slovenian singer-songwriter Jani Kovačič.

A heartfelt, intensely sparkling evening, steeped in the vivid sonic and emotional palette of Katarina’s deeply intimate confessions and her poetry captured on the album »Beležnica«, was in fact a full success. A big, roomy stage, a solid turnout – which in turn sparked a solid burst of energy – and solid sound with an excellent balance of every element of the mix, courtesy of Boban – the legendary house fixture of Orto Bar club, are the factors that together made Katarina and her crew feel great, so the concert came across even more intensely than at Stari Glej, and with its poetry delivered through stage acting and the messages of the album »Beležnica«, it touched everyone present even more strongly, more deeply and more provocatively.