Lindsey Stirling Delves Into Her Musical Background and Fusing Violin with Dance

Brendan Reynolds

Pulling from musical traditions as disparate as country western and hip-hop, and ranging as far back as classic orchestral music to popular modern electronic dance music genres like dubstep, 26-year-old Southern California native Lindsey Stirling‘s innovative and high octane performance style has made her musical act a major stage draw and her YouTube channel Lindseystomp one of the most popular.  Lindsey first brought her performance talents, which showcase an electric blend of sublime violin playing with modern dance routines; into the public eye in 2010 on the popular competition reality show America’s Got Talent.  Entertainment Voice recently spoke with Lindsey Stirling about her experience performing on prime time television, as well as her eclectic musical and artistic inspirations, and the big show she has coming up at the Greek Theatre.  

You incorporate a variety of different musical genres and styles into your playing, can you talk a bit about your musical influences and how you got turned on to your interdisciplinary approach?

I think a lot of people have a lot of eclectic tastes, and I think definitely I’m one of those people.  I draw my inspiration from very diverse places.  I have a classical background, but I love everything from rock and roll to dubstep, but I absolutely love classical music.  Some of my inspirations growing up were violinists who took the instrument and made it their own and did unique stuff with it.  There was this gal who played techno violin in the 90s called Vanessa-Mae, and I thought she was the coolest thing ever. David Garrett played rock style violin with a rock orchestra and it just really opened my mind up where I was like, wow, what can I do with the violin, where can I go with it?  I played in a punk band in high school and toured with a country artist for two summers.  I was in an indie rock band and played hip-hop tracks when I first starting to write.  So I’ve really got an eclectic background, not just with listening, I also like to pair the violin with things you don’t normally expect, so that’s kind of how I knew what I wanted to make when it came time to write.

Your performance style integrates modern dance into your highly sophisticated violin play, which makes for a really dynamic experience on stage, but is also something that is fairly complicated to pull off I’d imagine.  Can you share a little about how you developed those skills and that performance style?

In terms of how I learned to dance and play the violin, it’s definitely not a special talent, I couldn’t move at all when I first learned to play.  So it was a very specific skill that I set out to learn and cultivate that took years of practice to dance then incorporate the violin.  In the beginning, it was painstaking to practice every single step; you know like turn my head to the side and wink on this downbeat.  So it took a lot of practice and muscle memory, but now I’ve got it down to where the two are very connected in my brain.  Now I can’t sit still on stage, I love to twirl and jump around.

When you perform now is it a choreographed routine or do you sort of just flow with the music?

Some of it is just free flow, but some of it is highly choreographed.  Half the shows I have back up dancers so there’s a lot of in-sync choreography with all of us.  Then the other half is a little more free form.  

So you’re a classically trained violinist but do you have any classical dance background like in ballet or modern dance or anything like that?

No actually.  I’ve always loved dance and as a child I begged for both violin and dance lessons, my parents couldn’t afford either, but they made some sacrifices so I could have one, and I chose violin.  But I’ve always loved dance and started teaching myself when I was about 20-years-old.

You have some really interesting and beautifully put together music videos on your very successful YouTube channel.  Did you work with different directors and producing teams for each video and how do you go about coming up with the aesthetic concepts you play with in the videos?

I like to work with the same people, and for the first year of my YouTube channel I worked with the same director and it was just him and I that did everything.  I would build the sets, he would direct, I would edit everything.  Now the productions have gone up in scale, so I work with the same production teams for most of the videos but I still co-direct.  I also do a lot of the storyboarding and come up with the concepts.  Ninety-five percent of the time the concepts come from me writing and recording in the studio or from my stage performances.  I love telling stories and I actually went to film school so I love telling visual stories and creating new worlds for people.  I love doing things that are very otherworldly and fantasy driven.  But writing and recording aren’t my favorite part of the process, I really come alive when I get to perform for people, whether live or in a video, that’s my favorite part.  

You participated in season 5 of “America’s Got Talent.” Can you share a bit about that experience?

It taught me so much.  It was my first time getting in front of a real crowd.  It was a huge shell shock moment to be on live TV and deal with that kind of pressure.  Then to get kicked off in sort of a harsh way and it was really devastating to get home and realize still nobody really knew who I was or what I do.  You know fame builds slowly.  A moment on TV no matter how great that moment is, that is not enough to grow a career.  You know an artistic career has to have a foundation and grow and I think people tend to believe if you can just get on TV that you’ll become famous and everything with go from there, but I was shocked that that was not the case.  So the show kind of crushed me, and although it gave me a thick skin, it wasn’t until I got home and regained my confidence that I discovered YouTube, and that was when I was able to really build my fan base and jumpstart my career.

So the ability you had through YouTube to create and design your own content and artistic brand sort of bolstered your career more than the TV show did.

Absolutely.  The show made people recognize me but it didn’t allow me to really build my fan-base.  YouTube really allowed me to do my own thing and not just what someone is telling me I need to do.  And it actually gave me a continuous platform that let people really get to know me and my art, instead of just being that girl that was on TV for a second.

Were there any influences, musical or otherwise, from your childhood and pre-professional life that had a significant impact on your artistic style and vision?

My favorite band was Evanescence.  My last single “Shatter Me” came from that sort of dark and eerie sound that I liked so much about them, but I just wanted it to have a dubstep style rather than a hard rock style. Skrillex got me into dubstep in the first place, and we are actually going to be playing together at a festival soon, so I’m pretty excited about that, I finally get to meet Skrill!

You must really love to play to a live audience given your brand of dynamic high-energy performance style?  Can you talk a bit about your thoughts and feelings on touring and performing at such a high level?

Honestly the reason I pursued a musical path in the first place is because I fell in love as a teen with live performing.  I love feeding the audience that kind of energy, especially when it’s something you’ve created.  It’s the most amazing connection you feel when they respond positively.  It’s also extremely physically demanding for me, so it’s great to walk off stage and know that I gave that audience everything I’ve got.

You’ve got a big show coming this Monday at the legendary Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, I saw another great violinist, Andrew Bird, play there a couple years ago and he sounded amazing, are you psyched for the show?

The Greek show is going to be a little bit emotional for me I think because it’s my last show on this tour.  I’ve been touring pretty much non-stop for the last two years, so it’s my last night with my tour family.  But I’m so excited to play my hometown, and the Greek is a bucket list venue for me, so it’s going to be a magical night.