Jason Mraz & Dean Lewis to Perform at Mix 94.1's Spring Fling Concert at The Theater at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas

This April, music sensations Jason Mraz and Dean Lewis will headline Mix 94.1's Spring Fling concert at The Theater at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas, part of Curio Collection by Hilton, on Saturday, April 29, 2023. Mraz and Lewis will be joined by local opener, alt-singer and songwriter, Michael Richter. Tickets go on sale to the public this Friday, Feb. 24, 2023 at 10 a.m. PST on AXS.com.

The annual Spring Fling has been a staple in Las Vegas for six years, with a brief hiatus after the pandemic. This year's one-day event will mark the event's first return to the stage since 2019, featuring some of the best core artists on Mix 94.1, including Mraz and Lewis.

Multi-GRAMMY Award winner and Songwriters Hall of Fame Honoree Jason Mraz, will take the stage to perform his beloved hits, as well as his new single "I Feel Like Dancing" from his eighth studio album Mystical Magical Rhythmical Radical Ride, slated for release on June 23, 2023.

The album, dedicated to Mraz's mom, June, is an ode to becoming fully self-expressed as he continues to live this dream of making music. Mystical Magical Rhythmical Radical Ride is a return to pop music for Mraz, who reunited with producer Martin Terefe (Coldplay, Train, Mike Posner), his collaborator on We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things., Mraz's landmark album featuring "I'm Yours" and "Lucky."

Australian singer-songwriter, Dean Lewis, will also take the stage to perform hits from his second album, The Hardest Love, such as "How Do I Say Goodbye" and "Hurtless." Known for hits like "Waves" and "Be Alright," Lewis continues to climb local and international charts.

Las Vegas local, Michael Richter, will open the show that evening. The alt-singer and songwriter is known for his confessional storytelling and explosive live performances. His debut album, Live at 11th Street, which was recorded in a solo/acoustic setting at Downtown Las Vegas's 11th Street Records, is made up of 13 captivating songs that keep the audience hooked onto every word.

The Theater at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas is proud to offer an expansive VIP service including open bar packages, private expedited entry, dedicated hosts, merchandise delivery, custom swag, and access to luxury suites and VIP lounges to its guests for an unparalleled live entertainment experience.

For more information on this performance or for news from The Theater at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas, visit virginhotelslv.com. Virgin Hotels Las Vegas proudly offers complimentary self-parking.

About Jason Mraz

Jason Mraz is living full spiral. It's not full circle, exactly, because he's changed and his experiences have changed, but on his 8th studio album, Mystical Magical Rhythmical Radical Ride, the musician has found himself returning to a familiar junction in space.

Throughout the album, there are hints of Mraz's formative releases, including his 2002 debut Waiting For My Rocket to Come and 2005's Mr. A-Z, but it ultimately finds a kinship with 2008's We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things.

The new songs, which are unabashedly pop, see Mraz reuniting with numerous collaborators, including L.A. band Raining Jane and producer Martin Terefe, who helmed the 2008 breakout album. The songs grapple with the emotions and experiences that come with being in your mid-life, a time that is often ignored by pop songwriters. Its optimistic, inspiring sensibility reflects the musician's overall approach to being in the world. It is, in fact, full spiral, reflecting the past but becoming something new.

About Dean Lewis

Dean Lewis knows what moves him. It's the call that never came. It's the cruel act of betrayal, the hope that fades, the moment of bliss recalled in darker days when all is lost. Most of all, it's finding the turn of phrase, the tone and the melody that brings all this brimming to the surface of every heart that's ever felt the same way.

"When I create music, I don't just want to connect to the ears of the listener, I also want to connect to the heart. But when I can connect to both, it's even better," says the Sydney-born, Nashville-based singer-songwriter. With his heart-breaking second album, The Hardest Love, "if anything, I've gone further into myself, trying to zone in on the little niche I'm good at, really figuring out my voice, my reason to exist."

That "little niche" has accounted for more than 7.5 billion streams and 3.8 million album and EP sales since Waves and Be Alright got under the skin of a smitten global audience circa 2016-2018. Dean's #1 album, A Place We Knew, sealed a surreal trip from his grandma's spare room to Jimmy Kimmel Live! touring Europe and the US three times and winning ARIAs for Album of the Year, Best Male Artist and Song of the Year (7 Minutes) along the way.

Still, life happens. And so do songs.

"Nearly all of these songs are about one girl," Dean explains of the 10 new tracks on The Hardest Love. "She's from Colorado, now she lives in LA, but I spent three, four years on the road thinking about her, calling her, writing songs for her. It was kind of a long-distance thing, but we became really, really close because I didn't really have a home."

As the rigors of the road ground to a sudden halt, the dream fell to Earth. "She was not the person, and I wasn't ready," Dean says. "We just didn't work out. To me it was quite a dramatic thing because the person that I'd built up in my head didn't exist. So all these songs just poured out ..."

Looks Like Me was the first taste last October: a rhythmically upbeat song hiding a sinking feeling that slammed home with Hurtless, an instant 20-million-streaming second single in April. Each struck an achingly familiar chord: a crushing moment cast in the close-up cinematic style that's become Dean's trademark. From primetime TV in Denmark to his live return in the USA, his legion of fans welcomed him with a wave of intense emotion.

"I started writing the album in this hotel on Sunset in West Hollywood," he explains of the lengthy creation process. "I wrote in Nashville for a while, then I came back to LA and then went to London..." In each port of call, he experimented with various producers in search of the right sound and feeling. The pandemic meant time was on his side.

"There's a famous quote that says people have their whole life to write their first album, and then six months to write the next one. I feel like I've had double the amount of time for this album than the first one."

He recalls the jolt of ignition that greeted his first single, Waves, six years ago. "It blew up so fast and everything was so crazy that I didn't have time to figure out what I was doing. This time I had a lot more time to think about what I liked about those songs, to go back and look at the things that made them work."

The deep dive led to a reaffirmation of honest emotional content, and consolidation of Dean's studio partnership with Waves/ Be Alright producers Nick Atkinson and Ed Holloway. Highlights of The Hardest Love include the uneasy surrender of Scares Me and the bracing title track, a deceptively dark song that builds from whisper to visceral brass finale.

How Do I Say Goodbye is a devastating song about the looming loss of a parent - one which had a happier ending in real life, Dean notes - with input from occasional collaborator Jon Hume. American pop journeyman Tyler Johnson (Harry Styles) co-created the tender lovers' impasse, Something To Help.

Other songs were more solitary in nature and execution. "Me and this girl, we were talking on the phone," Dean says of All For You, an optimistic centrepiece to an album of deeply affecting melancholy. "When I wrote it, I thought everything was going to work out. I played it to her when we hung out in LA. But I didn't have the ending yet..."

By virtue of the remote recording process, Dean found himself co-producer of the album. "I had to learn how to do a lot more on this one," he says. "I had to learn how to record my own vocals for a few of the songs; how to record my own acoustic guitar. All For You I recorded by myself, just me alone at an Airbnb in Malibu."

The lion's share of mixing fell to Mark 'Spike' Stent, a name Dean first saw in the credits of albums by Oasis and Ed Sheeran. "Spike is really good at blending pop with organic," he says. "That's what I'm aiming for. I want my songs to sound raw, but to be able to compete and be successful at the highest level. Blending those two things together, that's a real skill."

From hope to heartache and back again, The Hardest Love is "totally reflective of where I was in my life at that time," Dean says. "It's been a stressful few years... I don't think I realised the pressure I was under because on the other side, man, I had nothing. I'd moved in with my grandma before I got a record deal. I had no money; on the verge of thinking that I had wasted all of the opportunities in my life."

"When Waves and Be Alright blew up, I just sprinted so fast that maybe I got a bit burnt out. I'm good though, now. It's been a crazy, crazy time. I can't wait to play these songs for the people who bought my first album, 'cause I really think they're gonna love this one."

About Michael Richter

Las Vegas alt-singer/songwriter Michael Richter's confessional storytelling and explosive live performances could be called anything but dishonest - some things can't be faked. Though he grew up in a musical family (Richter's grandfather played guitar for outlaw country legend Waylon Jennings), it wasn't until his mother was murdered in 2014 that he turned to songwriting. "It was this weird thing where she instilled music into me, and she's gone, and I gotta do it now," Richter says.

The loss is chronicled in his song "2014," one of over thirteen soul-baring songs performed to a captive audience on Richter's powerful debut album, Live at 11th Street (recorded in a solo/acoustic setting at Downtown Las Vegas's 11th Street Records). Since he began performing in 2018, Richter has built a large, supportive community of friends and fans (you can see many of them on the cover of Live at 11th Street).

He has performed at Las Vegas's Life is Shit Festival, and recently kicked off a Las Vegas residency playing original music at Virgin Hotel in Las Vegas.

Photo credit: Shervin Lainez

Photo Credit: Genevieve Rafter-Keddy

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