Kaliopi sings at the A1 Arena Boris Trajkovski on 17 October. The voice that took Macedonia to Eurovision twice returns to a home stage, in the biggest hall in Skopje.

Her career began in the eighties as the singer of the band Kaliopi, founded together with Romeo Grill, with which she won her first following across Yugoslavia. From 1999 she continued solo. That is nearly four decades on stage - a line few Macedonian performers can put next to their name.

She has been to Eurovision twice. In 2012 in Baku, with the rock ballad "Crno i belo", she reached the final and finished thirteenth - the best Macedonian result of that period. Four years later in Stockholm she sang "Dona", a song she wrote herself with Romeo Grill and performed in Macedonian, but she did not make the final. Insisting on singing in your mother tongue on Europe's most-watched stage is a decision that says a great deal about her.

Tickets via kupikarta.com cost 700 denars. The A1 Arena Boris Trajkovski is a hall that needs a serious audience to fill, and Kaliopi is one of the few home-grown names who reliably does. For an October evening in Skopje that is the basic information - the rest is carried by the voice.