Biography

Miroslav "Miro" Žbirka (21 October 1952 – 10 November 2021) was a Slovak pop and rock singer and songwriter, widely popular in 1980s Czechoslovakia. Born in Bratislava to a Slovak father and an English mother, he sang in Slovak, English, and Czech. He sometimes recorded in London, but lived in Slovakia and since early 1990s in Prague, Czech Republic, where he died.

In the late 1970s, Žbirka co-founded two Czechoslovak pop music bands, Modus and Limit. In 1982, he rose to fame by winning the annual Zlatý slavík award for the best male singer in Czechoslovakia. After the 1992 division of Czechoslovakia, he repeated this achievement in the Slovak annual Slávik Awards, coming number one in the annual end of year charts in 2002, 2004 and 2005.Žbirka had some performances with Jon Anderson in 2012. Asteroid 5895 Žbirka, discovered by Czech astronomer Zdeňka Vávrová in 1982, was named in his honor (the official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 27 August 2019 (MPC 115893)). He died from pneumonia in Prague on 10 November 2021, leaving behind recorded vocals for his 15th studio album, Posledné veci (Last Things), which was completed by his son David Žbirka in Konk Studios by May 2022.