Portuguese broadcaster RTP have revealed the 26 composers who are behind the songs that will be taking part in the national selection for the Eurovision Song Contest for Portugal next year: Festival da Canção 2018!
The composers are:
- Aline Frazão
- Armando Teixeira
- Benjamin
- Bruno Cardoso
- Capicua
- Diogo Clemente
- Diogo Piçarra
- Francisco Rebelo
- Fernando Tordo
- Isaura
- João Afonso
- Jorge Palma
- José Cid
- JP Simões
- Júlio Resende
- Mallu Magalhães
- Miguel Ângelo
- Minta
- Nuno Rafael
- Paulo Flores
- Paulo Praça
- Tito Paris
- Janeiro
- Daniela Onis
- Peter Serrado
- Rita Dias
On this list we can see some former Eurovision participants. Fernando Tordo represented Portugal in 1973 with the song ‘Tourada’ and José Cid did the same thing in 1980 with ‘Um grande, grande amor’.
The first 22 composers on this list were invited by RTP themselves. One came from the TV programme Masterclass on Antena 1 (Daniela Onis), two from a public call (Peter Serrado and Rita Dias) and the last one was invited by the winners of last year’s edition, Luísa and Salvador Sobral, and they chose: Janeiro.
Here is a collage with all the composers (click for a bigger size):
RTP is on cloud 9 with the enormous interest in Festival da Cançao from the Portuguese music industry, because, remember, initially we were to have 20 songs in the race, not 26, but this is what RTP had to say:
The enormous enthusiasm with which the most varied people in the musical world welcomed the proposal made by RTP and the excessive number of applications submitted through the open competition, promoted by Antena 1, the 20 songs that were originally intended the compete in Festival da Cançao 2018, have been joined by 6 more, hence the revelation of 26 composers today. In each of the semi-finals, 13 songs will be in contention. In each of them 7 will advance so we will have 14 finalists in Guimarães.
The songs themselves will be revealed at a later stage and as reported earlier, the semi-finals of Festival da Canção 2018 will be held on February 18 and 25, with the grand final on the 4th of March in the city of Guimarães.
