On December 10, 2025, we lost one of the most fascinating vocal interpreters in Slovenia, Aleš Hadalin. Hadalin was known as a ‘promoter of the human voice,’ and through his work he earned the flattering title of one of the most original explorers of the human voice and singing in Slovenia.
As a kid he played the accordion, and he also mastered the harmonica and the recorder. In 1979 he founded a boys’ octet at his high school in Tolmin, and in 1981 he enrolled to study musicology in Ljubljana. At the end of 1986 he co-founded the band Tantadruj. Gigs around Slovenia followed, and Hadalin recorded two albums with Tantadruj. The self-titled LP came out in 1990, and the album “Strunam” in 1997. Tantadruj later released five more albums and a compilation CD: “Karantanski blues” (2000), “Kar je, beži” (2009), “Pesmi iz polifona” (2012), “Vihar” (2018), “Mehurčki” (2019) and “Tantadruj 1987–1991” (compilation, 1998)
In 1992 he and guitarist Marjan Pirnar started playing and singing jazz standards together. They wrote enough material for an album, but it never came out. In 1995 he joined the dance company En Knap. With them he worked on four productions: “Struna in želo” (1996), “Zakonitosti kobre” (1997), “Popoln korak?” (2001) and “Pasijansa (2006)”. With En Knap, Hadalin played stages all over Europe and other parts of the world. With the group he also made three films: “Vrtoglavi ptič” (1996), “Dom svobode (1998)” and “Krotilci časa” (2002). For the dance piece “Popoln korak?”, Hadalin arranged and released the music on a CD titled “Umetnost hoje” (2001). During this time he worked with all kinds of musicians, especially those active in jazz and blues. With pianist Jože Šalej he recorded a CD of jazz standards, “Gee Baby” (2002). CDs followed: “Kako lepo je” (2003) and “Antisong” (2005), and in 2005 he put out the CD “Norec” with Marko Bohte (Nula Kelvina). Then came a dive into exploring Slovenian folk music. The result was the CD “Jaz mam pridno gospodinjo”, released on December 15, 2009, with reinterpretations of Slovenian folk songs. In 2012 came another album of reinterpreted Slovenian folk songs with Hadalin’s name on it, titled “Stoji tam gora Limbarska“, and three years later the album “Ta tobak je sladka travca“!
In the fall of 2009 he co-founded the group Petzapet, which also included Petra Trobec, Neža Peterle, Metod Banko and Tomaž Maher. The five-piece vocal group, devoted to multi-part singing of lesser-known Slovenian folk songs, released a self-titled studio album in 2016.
Hadalin also took part in the project Sounds of Slovenija, worked with Jurki & basisti and with Adi Smolar (the album “Naš svet se pa vrti”, 1991), and was a special guest at the band Ana Pupedan’s anniversary concert in 2007, marking the group’s 15th year. The band later released it as a self-released DVD/CD package!
