The first heat of Böyük Sahna, the Azerbaijani format for the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest, took place in Baku on the night of Feb 9-10. Fourteen candidates showed their best in front of an expert jury. Only ten of them proceeded to the second heat of Böyük Sahna to be held on February 16.

The semi-finalists performed different covers of the famous pop songs. The show started with Aphrodisiac, the Greek entry in the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest, sang by Lala Sultan. Another Eurovision cover was Glorious, the German entry from Malmö sang by Valeria Huseynzadeh (Rilaya).

The five members jury consisted of the famous Azerbaijani singers and people of the show business: Eldar Gasimov (the winner of the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest), Murad Arif (the TV host), Tunzala Agayeva (the composer and singer), Mubariz Tagiyev (the Azerbaijani honoured singer), Zumruz Dadashzade (the professor of Baku Music Academy).

Here are the results of jury voting (the qualifiers in bold):

Lala Sultan (37 points)

Aydin Eyvazzade (46 points)

Hülya Ibadova (45 points)

Samira Efendiyeva (43 points)

Elton Ibrahimov (49 points)

Ayshebeyim Nagieva (37 points)

Band Wave (34 points)

Fuad Asadov (46 points)

Khana Hasanova (44 points)

Erkin Osmanli (49 points)

Dilara Kazimova (50 points)

Safa Eldar (36 points)

Valeria Huseynzadeh (Rilaya) (37 points)

Azad Shabanov (48 points)

Dilara Kazimova performed Mercy by Duffy and got for her cover the highest number of points.

ANN.Az