Blair Konczal is a student at Kansas State University and an ISA Featured Blogger. Blair is currently studying abroad with ISA in Florence, Italy.
This past weekend I left the beautiful city of Florence to check out Germany. The weekend included traveling between 4 different cities, a 40 person hostel, 7 forms of public transportation, a castle, and last but not least a concert in Cologne, Germany.
If you’re a fan of EDM (electronic dance music) and you haven’t heard of Zedd I suggest you stop whatever you’re doing right now and go YouTube the fellow. Specifically go listen to his widely popular “Clarity” album. Zedd (also known as Anton Zaslavski) is a 23-year-old German born producer/DJ. He recently performed on David Letterman being the first EDM artist ever to do so. This is a HUGE deal and showing that EDM can make a crossover to a broader audience with Zedd being one of the pioneers. Zedd is a true musician at heart. He has been classically trained and his been playing piano since he was four years old. Not only does he perform his EDM hits, but he also is known to write acoustic versions of his songs, which are widely popular. Heck my own mother enjoys his acoustic versions on his songs and she’s 52. The fact that he’s writing music that both a 52-year-old and 21-year-old can enjoy is pretty impressive if you ask me.
Now that I gave you a quick background on Zedd it’s time to get to the concert. This is the second time I’ve seen Zedd. The first time was in Dallas, Texas at the Lights All Night festival. I thought he was insanely good in Texas, but he blew me out of the water in Germany, making this one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen. I caught the very last concert of his European tour, and he hit the stage about 2:00 AM and played until 4:30 AM. Somehow I found myself in the first two rows of the jam-packed club during his set. He basically sweated on me (and if you know me from home you should be surprised that I didn’t faint at that very moment, because I think he’s that incredible).
Zedd is definitely a lively performer keeping the crowd energized the whole time, and having them chanting his name to come back to the stage for encore after encore. The night consisted of Zedd climbing up higher on the stage wearing a disco ball on his head to him jumping out onto a raft in the middle of the crowd. There was never a dull moment to say the least. One of the most entertaining moments of night was probably when he would get the ENTIRE crowd to crouch down on the floor for up to 30 seconds at a time and then have them all jump up and go crazy to the music at the same time. It was definitely a sight to see. When he was done playing I found myself really sad wishing he would play longer into the morning! Zedd will always be one of my all time favorite artists, and I highly suggest if you ever get the opportunity to see him jump at the chance to do so, because you won’t regret it!
Check out his website http://www.zedd.net/clarity/ for more information on his tour dates and music! And be sure to check me out on twitter @blairkonczal or on Instagram @blairkonczal to keep up with me on more of a daily basis of what I get into around Europe!
