Tiësto born on January 17, 1969 in Breda, Noord-Brabant, Netherlands) is one of the world's most famous trance DJs in the electronic dance music scene. Although he has used many aliases in the past, he is best known for his work as DJ Tiësto. On his latest productions, however, he has dropped the "DJ" label and he is now known simply as "Tiësto", an alias which is an Italian twist on his childhood nickname.
Tiësto's motto is:
| “ | I feel the energy from the crowd and I try to give it back, to create a unity. | ” |
He has been voted "best DJ in the World" 3 consecutive times by
DJ magazine from 2002 through 2004
. the first DJ to play live on stage in front of a public audience at an
Olympic Games at the
2004 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony in
Athens and was nominated for a
Grammy Award in 2008, for his album
Elements of Life
Early years (1985–2000)
Tijs Verwest began DJing professionally at school parties and then moved on to become a resident DJ between 1985 and 1994 at several clubs in The Netherlands. During these years, he produced hardcore/gabber tracks under aliases such as Da Joker and DJ Limited. However, it was at The Spock, a small club in Breda, where he was able to fine-tune his own style by playing in a separate room from 10 pm until 4 am on weekends. In the mid-1990s, he started to produce trance, and in 1997 he and Arny Bink co-founded Black Hole Recordings to support his work releasing a series of singles under various aliases. Black Hole Recordings and its sub-label Magik Muzik continue to sign Tiësto's vision of trance – producing musicians and DJs such as Cor Fijneman, Ton TB, and Mark Norman and also Joe Cheang. During this period, DJ Tiësto had been releasing the Magik (series), which has had seven installments starting in 1997 and ending in 2001, after this Tiësto began releasing the In Search of Sunrise (series), ISOS is a compilation of Tiësto's mixes with tracks from other DJ's.
Rise to fame (2001–2005)
Tiësto's fame started to rise in the late 1990s after his set at the first ID&T Innercity party (Live at Innercity: Amsterdam RAI), and it continued to skyrocket in the early 2000s following his six-hour "Tiësto Solo" sets which he performed without other DJs or opening acts. This idea, of one DJ playing alone to a large crowd, was brought to its pinnacle when Tiësto was the first DJ to hold a solo concert in a stadium; on May 10, 2003, he performed for over 25,000 people in Arnhem's Gelredome. This Concert was later called "Tiësto in Concert", the event was an enormous success. He repeated the same type of concert the following year during two consecutive nights in late October. In addition to holding these two concerts for 35,000 of his fans, he held another concert for a crowd of 20,000 in Hasselt, Belgium the following week. DVDs of both his May 10, 2003 and October 30, 2004 concerts have been released. Due to this concerts and the release of In My Memory, his first solo album released in 2001 which contained 10 singles he was crowned as "No. 1. DJ in the World" by DJ Magazine (UK) in 2002, 2003, and 2004.
In 2004 he released his second artist album Just Be, which featured his first single Traffic which is the first non-vocal track to reach number one spot in the Dutch national charts for 23 years. Globally, Tiësto is known for being the first DJ to play live on stage at an Olympic Games at the 2004 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony in Athens for 90 minutes. During the course of his performance the Dutch athletes started dancing in front of the DJ booth and had to be moved on by officials. A condensed studio-recorded a the songs played on the Olympic set, including new songs especially composed for the occasion, it was released as a continous mix entitled Parade of the Athletes in October 2004. In the liner notes, he noted the IOC requested to him that the music not contain any lyrics as they could be inadvertently misinterpreted.
| “ | The opportunity to perform my music for billions of people around the globe will be the greatest highlight of my life, I am honoured to be part of the biggest sports event in the world. - said Tiësto refering to the opportunity the Athens Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (ATHOC) offered him. | ” |
On August 20, 2005 Verwest took "Tiësto in Concert" to the United States when he played to thousands of fans in Los Angeles, California in the Los Angeles Sports Arena. For the second year in a row he performed live for a New Year's Eve/New Year's concert in Las Vegas, Nevada at the Orleans Arena to a sell-out crowd. Despite his four-city American tour being postponed due to the hurricane damage in New Orleans and Miami, playing such cities in the United States further expanded and cemented his popularity among more mainstream audiences. In the fall of 2005 he went on a very successful tour across Central and Eastern Europe where he played once in each country to crowds of 10,000 to 15,000 fans. Stops were made in Ukraine, Slovakia, Serbia, Macedonia, Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Croatia, and Poland . Tiësto also performed at the UNITY festival in South Africa where he played a show at the Gallagher Estate Arena in Midrand, a suburb of Johannesburg, to over 18,000 fans. However, the United States tour that was part of "Tiësto in Concert" was dwarfed by his appearance at Sensation White in 2006 where he performed to over 45,000 people in the world's biggest dance event in Amsterdam, Holland. Even this was surpassed later in the same summer where some 250,000 people danced on Ipanema Beach, Brazil, the second largest concert in the history of mankind.
Elements of Life era (2006–present)
In April 2006 Tiësto was named the official worldwide ambassador for the Dance4Life foundation promoting awareness of HIV/AIDS. DJ Tiësto, as the foundation's ambassador has helped the organization with fundraising along with recording the track "Dance4life", which marks the beginning of "Elements of Life", his future album at this time. The foundation consists on a better way of living in exchange of entertainment to the young crowd.
On April 6, 2007 Tiësto began presenting a new weekly two-hour radio show called "Tiësto's Club Life" on Dutch radio station Radio 538. XM Satellite Radio in the United States later started broadcasting the show on Channel 81 BPM as part of their "Global Domination" lineup on Saturday nights. The show is broadcast on Radio 538 on Friday nights between 22:00 CET and midnight and on BPM on Saturday nights between 8:00 PM EST and 10:00 PM EST. The first hour is also available as a podcast on the Radio 538 website and on iTunes audio podcasts.
On April 16th, 2007, Tiësto released his fourth studio album Elements of Life. In support of the album, he embarked on his Elements of Life World Tour. In December 2007 it was announced that the album was nominated for a Grammy Award, in the category "Best Electronic/Dance Album." In 2007, he also started his Elements of Life World Tour, which has shows across the world. South and Latin America brought some of the biggest crowds on his January and February South American leg of the tour. On January 7th, he played to an amazing 200,000 people in the streets of Ipanema Beach in Rio de Janeiro.On February 16 2007 he played in India at the Gachibowli Stadium, Hyderabad. Though this show had a low turn out of only 5000, it was his first show in Asia. Tiësto's performance at Parken Stadium in Copenhagen, Denmark on November 10, 2007 was also sold out. In Valentine's day 2008, he performed in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
The Elements of Life World Tour DVD will be released in honor of this exciting event. A Release Party for the DVD was held on February 29th 2008 from 8PM - 3AM in London at the IndigO2 club.
.jpg)