Adi Šoše closes out Belgrade's summer with a concert under the pylon of Ada Bridge on 26 September, starting at 18:00. The Mostar singer who had not stepped onto a single stage until the end of 2017 because of anxiety is, less than a decade later, filling a plateau in the Serbian capital with a band of his own.

Šoše's story is anything but the usual showbiz biography. He was born in Mostar on 29 December 1992, trained as a telecommunications technician at an electrical engineering school, then went on to study civil engineering in his home city. He practised singing at the Mostar Rock School, but for years he could not bring himself to stand in front of an audience. The first real breakthrough came in 2019 on "Zvezde Granda", where he reached the semi-finals, and that same year he became the lead vocalist of Miligram. He stayed until 2021, then went out on his own.

His solo career brought a first album, "Nije lako biti ja", in 2023, followed by appearances at Melodije Jadrana with "Najljepši cvijet" and "Zrno nade". The hits "Od jeseni do proljeća" and "Pusto ostrvo" stitched their way across the region, and his streaming numbers put him among the most played Balkan voices of the last few years. What sets him apart is that he sings across his full range, with no production layered on to hide the voice.

He comes to Belgrade with the AL Music band, as part of the Avalsko leto programme, on a tour called "Daljine". The plateau under the pylon of Ada Bridge is an open space looking out over the Sava, which for acoustic arrangements and a large band means sound spreading out over the water instead of bouncing off hall walls. The start is at 18:00, earlier than usual for a concert of this size.

Tickets through tickets.rs start at 1,200 dinars, which is around 630 denars in Macedonian money. For the price of one evening in a Skopje tavern, in other words, you can hear a man who learned to sing in front of a mirror because he could not do it in front of people.