Raiven

Raiven is the stage name of Sara Briški Cirman, a Slovenian pop singer, mezzo-soprano and harpist, born on 26 April 1996 in Ljubljana. She moves easily between pop stages and opera houses, and in 2024 she represented Slovenia at the Eurovision Song Contest.

She began making music at four, at Ljubljana's Glasbena matica, studied the harp at the music school in Ljubljana from 2002 to 2011 and finished the arts secondary school at the Maribor Conservatory as a singer and harpist. In 2013 she won first place at the international Antonio Salieri harp competition in Italy. She went on to study solo singing and opera at the Academy of Music in Ljubljana, graduating in 2018 and completing her master's degree in 2021.

The name Raiven comes from the English word raven. She started using it in 2014, when she released the song "Jadra" with the guitarist Tadej Košir and the producer Jernej Kržič. In EMA, the Slovenian Eurovision selection, she came second with "Črno bel" in 2016, third with "Zažarim" in 2017 and second again with "Kaos" in 2019. Her debut album Magenta came out on 21 April 2017 and won the Zlata piščal award for album of the year, and after working with writers and producers at Metropolis Studios in London she released the EP REM in February 2019.

On 4 July 2019 she played the Fusion Stage of the Exit festival in Novi Sad. She has appeared as a soloist with the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra and Big Band, the Slovenian Baroque Orchestra and the Slovenian Police Orchestra, and in February 2020 she sang her song "Ti" with the symphony orchestra in the Ljubljana opera house. With "Volkovi" she won the audience's grand prize at Popevka 2021, and in 2022 she presented Doloroso, an electro-opera mixing operatic arias with electronic pop, at Cankarjev dom. She returned to Popevka in 2023 as a host, with Helena Blagne, and introduced her song "Ikona" there.

In December 2023 RTV Slovenia chose her to represent the country at Eurovision 2024 in Sweden. Her song "Veronika", sung in Slovenian, placed ninth in its semi-final and finished 23rd in the final with 27 points. Her second EP, Sirene, followed in 2024, and in 2025 she co-hosted EMA.

On the classical side she has sung Rosina in Rossini's The Barber of Seville, the title role in Handel's Agrippina at Cankarjev dom, Larina in Eugene Onegin and María in Piazzolla's tango opera María de Buenos Aires at the Ljubljana opera, and she received the Academy of Music's Prešeren award for her artistic achievements.