Tiësto Kicks Off New Las Vegas Residency

If you’re bummed because you won’t be able to hear Tiësto headline at next month’s sold-out Ultra Music Festival in Miami, cheer up.

Starting Saturday, Feb. 4 the Dutch-born DJ, producer and mix-master (real name: Tijs Michiel Verwest) will kick off an exclusive residency with Wynn Las Vegas that will see him perform a series of a dozen or more headlining dates throughout 2012 at several Wynn-operated venues in Sin City. The series kicks off with Tiësto’s Saturday show at XS, The Nightclub at Encore. It will be followed later in the year by performances at Encore Beach Club and Surrender, plus some additional gigs at XS, which has an intimate capacity of 5,500 (intimate, at least, compared to the 450,000 people who bought up all the tickets for next month’s Ultra Music Festival).

You can get ticket info for Saturday’s show on xs.wantickets.com. Prices range from $80 per person for general admission to $200 per person for a VIP ticket (as of Wednesday afternoon, tickets were still available). If you already have plans for Saturday, upcoming acts of note at XS include multiple 2012 Grammy nominee Skrillex (Feb. 6), Calvin Harris (Feb. 12), Diplo (Feb. 13 and March 15), Afrojack (Feb. 18) and Steve Aoki (Feb. 20). (Aoki’s national “Deadmeat” tour includes a March 16 show in San Diego, but the venue has yet to be announced.)

Tiësto’s other Wynn Las Vegas dates will be announced on wynnlasvegas.com/nightlife.

Booking Tiësto for an exclusive residency seems like a savvy move by Wynn Las Vegas. Recently voted the “Greatest DJ of All Time” by Mixmag, Tiësto’s status as one of the world’s elite electronic music artists is bolstered by the fact that his popularity seems to increase almost by the week.

His solo show last October at the Home Depot Stadium in Carson, near Los Angeles, drew a capacity crowd of 26,000, making it the single best-drawing DJ show ever in the United States by a single artist. His 2010 “Kaleidoscope World Tour,” which included 175 shows on six continents, drew more than 1 million people. As a result, he was ranked as one of Billboard magazine’s Top 25 largest grossing touring acts of the year. More recently, Tiësto announced he was launching his own SiriusXM Satellite radio channel. He also performed what was billed as the first-ever live concert stream on Twitter. The venue for that concert? XS.  

“Tiësto is more than an artist — he is a globally respected brand,” said Jesse Waits, co-owner and managing partner of XS and Tryst Nightclubs, in a press release announcing the residency. “This partnership is an integral component of our plans to solidify Wynn Las Vegas as a mecca for electronic music. The combination of Tiësto’s talent, devoted fan base and special production elements will create a monumental series of events in the year ahead.”

Read more of George Varga's music reviews and stories on utsandiego.com

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