Bass, ethereal vocals and an airy string melody grow from a dark stage, crawl up the steps and climb the strong monoliths of . Then emerges, with a wide confident stance and a bow in hand. As soon as the beat drops, Stirling is in motion.
With worldly music mixed with unexpected and brilliant visuals, a Stirling show is much like Cirque du Soleil. The violinist, composer and YouTube star may not be doing acrobatics, but she twirls, hops and flies across the stage while giving a virtuosic performance on her violin.
Her movement reflects what she wants the audience to feel in her music. When she wants the audience to notice the bending of a melody she’ll arch her back and bend in fluid and graceful poses. Then with a flick of her hips or a kick of her feet she accents her intricate, syncopated riffs, peeling them from the highest to the lowest registers of her violin. Stirling’s lightning-fast fingers keep up with the percussion and keys, and when a song breaks into half time, her legato melodies have the chance to breathe. She achieved this electro-pounding, heart pumping sound with her two band mates on drums and keyboards. They connect seamlessly as Stirling pirouettes across the stage.
At one point the stage turned into the ¨Stirling Cemetery¨ during “Moon Trance.” During this scene, Stirling puts her zombie dancers in a trance with her violin until they all dance in synch. On “Shadows,” two larger-than-life projected shadows dance on a huge scrim behind Stirling. Images of water, fire, wind and lightning fill the stage during “Elements.”
Like her set design, Stirling showcases fantastical costumes throughout the night. It’s like musical cosplay, and is one of the reasons Stirling has been embraced by the gaming community. In the audience, fans dress to reflect their favorite games, like the engaged couple to my left in matching “Zelda”-style boots (they’ll be playing Stirling during their first dance as husband and wife). Stirling herself wore a futuristic, silver sequined dress then she changed into a Tinker Bell-esque skirt, and she donned an inversion of a classical ballet bodice with the wire frame exposed.
The crowd roared during what Lindsey introduced as her “Nerd Medley,” which gives a nod to all her covers of video game theme songs like “Halo,” “Assassin’s Creed” and “Legend of Zelda” to name a few. At one point I asked a fan, “Is this part from ‘Lord of the Rings’” and he corrected me, “this is the theme from ‘Dragon Age: Inquisition.’”
Stirling is making classical-style violin accessible for audiences of all ages and she is making space for the sounds of a traditional instrument in an increasingly synthesized music environment. Can a violin concert be epic? Lindsey Stirling proves that, yes. Yes it can.
