Josipa Lisac Live 2013.

This year I was lucky enough to have vacation at Christmas time (second time in ten years!) + hear my all-time favourite singer live exactly at the time when she had two sold out concerts in Zagreb's "Vatroslav Lisinski" concert hall, celebrating 40 years from release of her now-classic, debut album "Dnevnik jedne ljubavi" (Diary of one love) that has never been out of print ever since & was recently re-released on vinyl again.

My friend assumed that Josipa (63 now) is probably not force she was all those years ago, but surprisingly we were both amazed with lady's undiminished vocal power - in fact, seems she sound better than ever now. Surrounded by virtuoso backing musicians, she was the biggest virtuoso of all, swooping and thundering high and low with that recognisable, powerful nasal voice  and audience was thrilled. I must say that I watched it all somehow detached from all that adulation, because I found that all these vocal acrobatics became a dead end - even back in the day of Ex Yu, when competition was much bigger, Josipa was counted among handful of our all-time great singers and today it seems that she grew as artist in another direction, where playful vocalising and circling around original melody became her main goal. I noted that almost every single song has been turned around and twisted somehow into new dimensions, not necessarily a good thing. The only time when I truly enjoyed was during old classic "Ležaj od suza" that was left miraculously untouched and rocked just the way it was supposed, the rest of the concert Josipa improvised and insisted on new arrangements that the rest of audience loved but I found a bit tiresome. All those beautiful old songs were stretched beyond recognition and yes, guys were excellent, Josipa is still authoritative stage presence (with amazing voice) but I constantly wished that she showed off just a little less - perhaps occasional improvisation would be better thing that this overkill of theatrics. She has always played around the melody but now it seems like it became main focus of her live performances. Amazing singing but as I said, where does it lead? Standing ovations of course, though I was very tired at the end.