At the age of 19, Tajci became a superstar in Central Europe when she electrified an international TV audience, estimated at over a billion people, in the Eurovision Song Contest. The release of her recording of “Hajde da Ludujemo” (“Let’s Go Crazy”), coupled with the fall of the Berlin Wall, sparked a wave of optimism and an adulation for the attractive, engaging teenager— much like the Beatlemania phenomena the West had experienced thirty years earlier.
Themes: conversion, living in communism, material vs. spiritual values, love, family, marriage, children, women issues including post abortive healing
Tajci’s tours extensively in the USA with her concert events based on liturgical calendar: “I Thirst” for Lent; “Emmanuel” for Advent; “I do Believe” for ordinary time; “Let it Be” in Marian months of May and October.
Tajci also enjoys creating customized special events which she performed at numerous conferences and groups (Marriage Encounter, Men and Women Conferences, Fr. Corapi Events, Marian Conferences, Healing Services, Fund Raisers)
Tajci’s story and music has been featured on EWTN, TBN and received recognition from a list of US Bishops
Born Tatjana Matejas in Zagreb, Croatia, Tajci (TY-chee) grew up in what was then communist Yugoslavia. Raised in a musical family, she was singing with her father’s band when she was only four.
Tajci was admitted to the prestigious Croatian Music Conservatory where she received a rigorous music education with a focus on classical piano. As a young girl, she was a frequent performer on the national stage, appearing in countless musical, theatrical and television productions.
As thousands of people of all ages jammed Tajci’s concerts, her records achieved Platinum and Diamond sales. There was a Tajci doll, newborns were named after her, and the European magazines and tabloids filled their pages with Tajci stories and photos. Her life became a blur of concerts, video shoots, personal appearances and commercial tie-ins— an unending crush of photographers, adoring fans, and bodyguards. Ironically the “dream come true” also brought feelings of isolation, loneliness and emptiness.
By 1991, war had come to Croatia. The young artist sang at giant concerts for peace, entertained wounded soldiers in hospitals and visited those on the front lines. Tajci joined thousands of young people flocking to the churches, now that the atheist regime had fallen. Then, according to CMN Magazine, “Shocking her country and peers, Tatiana left it all— stardom, glamor, fame, friends and family to come to the United States, alone and unknown, at age 21.”
Tajci had experienced a nation of young people looking to her for answers, but she had none. She had come to America to be free of her celebrity, and to find herself. For a while, she fled her image and changed her name. While living in New York, she did menial jobs, studied musical theater and learned to speak English fluently.
In her newfound anonymity, Tajci found her answers in prayer. In her faith and in the freedom it brought her, she found the inspiration to compose music and sing about her new experiences. While staying at a retreat house run by the Carmelite Sisters in Los Angeles, Tatiana met her future husband, Matthew Cameron, who encouraged her to tell the story of her own quest for spiritual healing. Together they formed Cameron Productions – a partnership based on their mutual desire to create art that would inspire people to a deeper faith journey.
With their three young children Dante, Evan and Blais – Matthew and Tajci have crossed and re-crossed the country a dozen times— playing concerts in close to thousand churches.
Cameron Productions has released eight of Tajci’s albums; two live concert TV Specials on DVD-- "I Thirst" her emotional portrayal of the Passion in April, 2004 in Los Angeles, and a Christmas concert performed in Chicago in December of 2006 as well as a EWTN special “Let It Be” – also released on a DVD.
Her popularity in America is also spreading beyond churches. TajÄi wrote a full-length musical “My Perfectly Beautiful Life” that has gotten positive notices and is now being developed for the stage. She also developed a show in which she indulged her love of 40’s era music with a big-band tribute to the songs of Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. Tajci and Matthew are even the founders of a musical theater for children.
Still a popular figure in central Europe, Tajci performed for 35,000 people at a concert in Bosnia & Herzegovina during the summer of 2006. She is also mounting a series of arena shows for a ‘reunion’ tour in Croatia scheduled for October 2011 in which she hopes to give a performance that will once again inspire and celebrate the gift of life.
Whether in large arenas or in intimate settings, Tatiana brings to her performances the knowledge that we are not alone. She has found her answers— in her faith, in her family and in her music.
