ZAGREB, 3 April 2022 - Scottish rock band Franz Ferdinand are playing Zagreb's Dom Sportova Hall on 25 April as part of their Hits To The Head tour, the organisers, LAA agency, have announced.

Their greatest hits album, Hits To The Head, is currently the best-selling foreign album in Croatia. This collection of 20 tracks, including two new ones, gives a cross-section of songs from their two decade long career.

Franz Ferdinand were formed in Glasgow in 2001 and have released five studio albums to date, selling millions of records worldwide and winning many music awards. Their hits include "Darts Of Pleasure", "Take Me Out", "Do You Want To", "No You Girls", "Walk Away", "This Fire", "Love Illumination", "Michael", "Ulysses", "The Dark Of The Matinée" and "Glimpse Of Love".

The current lineup is Alex Kapranos (vocals, guitar), Bob Hardy (bass), Dino Bardot (guitar), Julian Corrie (keyboards) and Audrey Tait (drums).

It will be the first foreign indoor concert in Croatia after more than a two-year pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

For more, check out our dedicated lifestyle section.

December 6, 2021 - A promising 2022 on the music scene gets even stronger with the announcement of The Cure in Croatia! The legendary English band will perform at Arena Zagreb next fall for their first-ever solo concert. Tickets will go on sale on December 9.

Giants of the alternative rock scene - The Cure will hold their first solo concert in Croatia on October 27, 2022 in Arena Zagreb! The huge base of domestic fans of this cult band, which does not give up on performances, still active 42 years after its founding, will finally come to its senses and see the first and long-awaited solo performance of The Cure in Croatia. The Zagreb concert is part of the just-announced European tour The Cure Tour 22, where The Cure will hold 44 concerts in 22 countries, all as part of an announcement of a new album that will bring another 67 minutes of The Cure sound.

The indie-rock pioneers have released 13 studio albums so far, more than 40 singles, their albums have sold 30 million copies worldwide, and there are a number of live albums, soundtracks, books… The Cure marked the lives of a generation of fans with their music, and although they are difficult to classify into a single musical genre, they influenced the formation of several of them such as goth rock, new wave, and post-rock. In 2019, five members of The Cure were officially inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

The Cure was formed in 1978 in Crawley, England, and since its first concert that same year, The Cure has played over 1,500 concerts, and live music and direct contact with the audience is what The Cure does best. So two years ago, they were named the best festival headliners by NME, which only proves their love for the stage. The Cure Euro 2022 tour will be the first since concerts in 2019, the year in which they celebrated 40 years of existence, and 30 years since the release of the cult album "Disintegration" in 1989, which secured the title of one of the best British bands in the last 50 year. That same year, after a three-month festival tour, they held an epic three-hour concert in Mexico City. In Arena Zagreb, a full 135 minutes of pure The Cure concert energy and enthusiasm await us, which will be preceded by the performance of the pre-band The Twilight Sad.

Tickets for The Cure in Croatia are on sale from Thursday, December 9 at 10 am, through the Eventim.hr website and at Eventim sales points. Ticket prices range from 175 to 650 kuna.

For more information, details, and the full list of dates for The Cure tour that will include Zagreb, visit their official Instagram page and their official website, or in Charm Music Croatia's official Facebook and Instagram pages.

For more concerts news, make sure to check out our dedicated lifestyle section.

November 8, 2021 - Catch Sting at Zagreb Arena next March as part of the legendary British singer-songwriter's 'My Songs' tour!

Cherrytree Music Company, Live Nation, and Charm Music announce Sting on Monday, March 21, 2022, at Arena Zagreb, where the British singer-songwriter will perform as part of the 'My Songs' tour. Ticket sales start on Friday, November 12, through Eventim.hr and at Eventim sales points.

Sting’s 'My Songs' concert is a lush and dynamic show featuring his favorite songs, written during the glorious career of this 17-time Grammy Award winner, both with The Police and as a solo artist. Hailed as a “masterful performance from start to finish,” the concert “takes fans on a musical journey through time,” with hits like “Fields of Gold,” “Shape of My Heart,” “Roxanne,” and “Demolition Man” and makes one an unforgettable event. Of course, fans can also expect the songs "Englishman In New York," "Every Breath You Take," “Message In A Bottle," and many of Sting’s other big hits.

Sting’s latest album, The Bridge, will be released worldwide on November 19 and showcases his prolific and diverse songwriting strength. Written and recorded during the pandemic, this new collection of poems reveals Sting’s reflections on personal loss, separation, lockdown, and extraordinary social and political turmoil. The Bridge presents different stages and styles from his unrivaled career and draws inspiration from genres such as rock n ’roll, jazz, classical music, and folk. This eclectic album features Sting’s typical pop-rock sound, especially well heard on the opening rock salvo of “Rushing Water” and the new indie-pop sound on “If It’s Love.” More about the album can be found at thebridge.sting.com.

Sting’s new weekly web TV series, On the Bridge, recently premiered and offers an intimate insight into the musician’s daily life as he prepares to launch his new album. In addition, Sting is releasing a new episode exclusively on Sting.com every Tuesday at 1 pm as a special tribute to his loyal fans. Each episode is exclusive to 24-hour fan club members and then available to a broader audience the next day from 1 pm.

On tour, Sting will be accompanied by an electric rock ensemble that includes Dominic Miller on guitar, Josh Freese on drums, Rufus Miller on guitar, Kevon Webster on keyboards, Shane Sager on accordion, and Melissa Musique and Gene Noble as backing vocals.

Special guest Joe Sumner appears on all newly announced dates, including the Zagreb concert.

Members of the Sting’s Fan Club will have the opportunity to access exclusive pre-sale tickets, before the general public, by visiting www.sting.com from Wednesday, November 10.

Tickets are on sale from Friday, November 12, through Eventim.hr and at Eventim sales points. Ticket prices for the following categories are: stand I 550 kn, stand II 360 kn, grandstand down I 560 kn, grandstand down II 390 kn, grandstand down III 320 kn, VIP box 830 kn, seats in the front rows 830 kn.

For more information on the tour, tickets, and fan club, visit www.sting.com.

June the 5th, 2020 - As we wrote on June the 1st, 2020, the initiative Zagreb, I love you so (Zagreb, take imam te rad) enacted and organised by the Unimedia Agency from Zagreb, opened with a panel discussion aimed to raise awareness about the necessity of a thorough restoration of the many historic venues damaged by the catastrophic earthquake in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic back in March.

If you missed it, you can find more details here.

As announced by the organiser, the second part of the action, and quite a special one indeed, is going to take place in the atrium of the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences (HAZU) on Sunday the 7th of June, 2020, at 20:00. It will be worth every little bit of attention and is going to be streamed on the platform of Vecernji.hr and on this YouTube channel. Make sure not to miss it, here's why:

Ludwig van Beethoven was born exactly 250 years ago. The world was preparing to celebrate one the of the most brilliant authors of all times, but then… the coronavirus pandemic sneaked in. And an earthquake shook Zagreb in the midst of it. Worldwide, events and concerts in the honour of the great master had to be cancelled.

The Zagreb Soloists wanted to give their share in the anniversary and adapted to the situation in a unique way. Sreten Krstic, their concert master, composer and teacher of music, was essentially inspired by the limits imposed by the pandemic and, for the first time known to us, re-orchestrated one of Beethoven’s most admired oeuvres and adapted it to the formation of a chamber orchestra. That is the version we're going to hear on Saturday evening.

The first four notes, the famous ‘ta-ta-ta-taaa’ opening Beethoven’s Symphony no.5 have entered the ear of most every human on Earth. When we listen to this glorious mainstay of classical music, we enjoy the harmonies, the rhythm, the dynamics and those often surprising specific musical colours of his characteristic orchestration, imagining what we feel or what we want as music has no boundaries.

As lovers of classical music, we seldom think of what inspired the author, of what is his real message and a real content of the particular piece. Here are some hints to help us be more aware of what Beethoven had in mind, and, especially and separately, why his Fifth Symphony is so adequate for this particular evening, as it is special and important in more ways than one.

Another thing everybody knows is that Beethoven started losing his hearing in his early years and that he ended his life totally deaf (although some evidence suggests that he could hear low tones and sudden loud sounds to his last day). What a setback for a musician!

In 1802, on the advice of his doctor, he moved to the small Austrian town of Heiligenstadt. In his letters to his brothers, he often mentioned his growing deafness and suicidal thoughts, but also his resolution to continue living for and through his art, how he had to ''seize fate by the throat, it shall certainly not crush me completely''.

This can be taken as the message of this Symphony to all : do not kneel, fight fate. And to coronavirus and the earthquakes we say: You can't crush us completely!

Make sure you dedicate less than one hour of your time on Sunday evening to this message that eventually will also be spread to the world through a delayed broadcast of Croatian National TV (HRT) and the US based cable TV and communications platform Comcast. Zagreb is greeting the world through the Zagreb Soloists, its honoured and honourable ambassadors!

Plug in, enjoy and be proud. For we will never be crushed!

For more on coronavirus, follow our dedicated section.

Enrique Iglesias was supposed to perform in Zagreb on December 1st, but the news today is that the concert has been cancelled because of fraud.

Slobodna Dalmacija reports, based on news from the MSN website, that Enrique Iglesias' Zagreb concert is one of several concerts planned to take place in Eastern Europe this autumn which have now been cancelled.

A statement posted on the website of Latvian agency Bilesu Serviss claims Iglesias' reps at the Creative Arts Agency cancelled the shows after promoters failed to fulfil their side of an agreement to stage the gigs. "Sadly and regrettably, after much careful consideration, and exhausting all possible alternatives, we have been forced to cancel the upcoming shows in Zagreb, Riga, and Minsk," the agency's explanation reads. "ArtBG, the concert tour promoter, producer, and event organiser, has not complied nor fulfilled their contractual obligations with the venues and all production elements for these three events. All of this makes it impossible to put on the show that our fans deserve. The safety of our fans and crew is paramount and we cannot guarantee this for everyone without the promoter fulfilling their obligations."

Croatian contacts from the Arena Zagreb concert hall have confirmed the claims made by the music industry website Pollstar that ArtBG would present themselves as a local promotor for other artists, and after the concert they'd just take the money and leave. They were in charge of Bryan Adams' concert in Zagreb as well.

The Eventim online ticketing platform sold the tickets for the concert, and today you can only see the info that it has been cancelled, just 10 days before the concert was supposed to take place. They offer a brief explanation of the problem but are not able to offer refunds yet, as they've found themselves in a bad situation through no fault of their own (you can read their statement in Croatian and English here).

Evan Dando and his band The Lemonheads will perform in Zagreb's Tvornica Kulture on the evening of February 27th. The Lemonheads' visit to Zagreb is a part of their promotional tour for their album of covers 'Varshons 2', and the audience in Zagreb can expect a long concert, with an unpredictable concert set.

Based on the stops they've already performed at during their European tour, they will perform around 25-26 songs from all phases of their career, off of their cult albums 'It’s A Shame About Ray' and 'Come On Feel The Lemonheads', as well as some songs from the recently published 'Varshons 2'. Evan and the band are not commiting to one set list, so they have not performed two identical concerts on the tour so far. They choose their songs from a set of as many as 60, combining an acoustic and electrical performances, and some of the songs are performed on the solo guitar by Evan Dando.

Their original songs that were performed the most at this tour include 'Hospital', 'My Drug Buddy', 'It's A Shame About Ray', 'Into Your Arms', 'Left For Dead', 'Being Around', 'Big Gay Heart', 'Stove' i 'Confetti'. The covers that got the most attention are 'I Just Can' Take It Anymore“ by Gram Parsons, 'Straight To You' by Nick Cave, 'Abandoned' by Lucinda Williams, 'Tenderfoot' and 'The Outdoor Type' by the band Smudge.

Their European tour started on February 6th, and at first they performed in England, Ireland and Scotland, and their first concert on the European mainland was in the Netherlands. They will perform in the Luxembourg, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, France and Croatia, as the only concert in our region.

On their Zagreb concert the opening act will be Karl Larsson, a well-known guitar player and singer to the indie pop band Last Days of April.

The tickets are sold for 100 kuna, 120 on the day of the concert. The places where you can buy them are Dirty Old Shop (Tratinska 18), Rockmark (Berislavićeva 13) and Aquarius CD Shop (Varšavska 13), Dallas Music Shop Rijeka (Splitska 2a), and onine at www.eventim.hr.

On April 21^st, 2018, a festival of activist choirs called "One Voice Festival" will take place at &TD Theater in the Student Center in Zagreb.

The renowned American singer-songwriter Cat Power will perform at Tvornica Kulture in Zagreb on September 9 in her debut Croatian performance.