Tiesto — Parade of Athletes. How Tijs Verwest turned out to be the DJ of the 2004 Olympics

At the beginning of the noughties, Tiësto’s career was going uphill. The Delerium remix reached the top ten. Collaborations with more successful Dutch musicians, Ferry Corsten and Armin van Buuren turned out great. The first album was a success. The singles from Black Hole Recordings main and subsidiary labels (co-owned by Tiësto back then) were played in  Armin’s A State of Trance show and in his personal selections around the world. Uplifting trance was in fashion and the 30-year-old Tiësto was a notable player in it. Activity, touring and the right production line-up had borne fruit: for three years in a row (from 2002 to 2004), he was the first in the Top 100 DJs according to the readers of DJ Mag. This had never happened before. The award itself appeared only recently (in 1997), and only Paul Oakenfold managed to stay on top for two years in a row. Moreover, the phenomenon of superstar DJs with astronomical earnings was only a few years old. They were all only beaten by van Buuren, who occupied the top ranking four times since 2007. After this, the award stopped getting much attention.

William Orbit, the man who promoted progressive house and defined the sound of Madonna’s Ray of Light album, released the record Barber’s Adagio for Strings in 1999. Orbit transformed the work of the American music scholar Samuel Barber in a soft nine-minute ambient track. His version was placed on the B-side. The release was promoted by a powerful trance remix by Ferry Corsten.