Marija Šestić

Marija Šestić is a singer and pianist from Banja Luka, born on 5 May 1987. She is best known for representing Bosnia and Herzegovina at the Eurovision Song Contest 2007 in Helsinki, where her ballad "Rijeka bez imena" collected 106 points and finished eleventh of twenty-four.

Music runs in the family: her father, Dušan Šestić, composed "Intermezzo", the national anthem of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Marija began singing at children's festivals at the age of six and started piano at the same time at the "Vlado Milošević" music school. At the Đurđevdan children's festival in Banja Luka she came third in 1995 and won in 1996 with "Daleko si zavičaju"; she took a special award for interpretation at Naša radost in Podgorica in 1998 and first prize for interpretation at Zlatno zvonce in Novi Sad in 1999, and she won the Young Talents Festival in Zenica three years running.

At thirteen she enrolled to study piano at the Academy of Arts in Banja Luka, and she became the first artist from the former Yugoslavia to appear on MTV Europe. Her debut album started her professional career, and the awards kept coming: best newcomer at the Banja Luka pop festival in 2003, a prize for interpretation at the Golden Star festival in Bucharest in 2004, and second place in Banja Luka in 2005 with "Ničija". The same year she tried for Eurovision for the first time and came fourth in the national final, BH Eurosong, with "In This World".

In 2007 the broadcaster chose her song internally. "Rijeka bez imena", a ballad with strong ethnic motifs written by Aleksandra Milutinović and Goran Kovačić, was presented on 4 March 2007 at the National Theatre in Sarajevo. It was recorded in Ljubljana with the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra and producer Nikša Bratoš, and the video was filmed on the Sava near Brčko and in Sarajevo. The song was also released in English as "Never Wake Me Up", and she performed it as a guest at Serbia's Beovizija 2007. That year the Banja Luka City Assembly gave her its award for an outstanding contribution to culture and art.

Later in 2007 she sang "Odavno" with Jacques Houdek at the Radio Festival in Serbia, and in 2010 she appeared at Sunčane skale in Herceg Novi with "Tajna". Alongside the stage she has built a career in music education: since 2007 she has worked at the Academy of Arts in Banja Luka, where she earned her master's degree in 2010, and in 2010 she represented Bosnia and Herzegovina at the EXPO in Shanghai.