Tag Archives: Lindsey Stirling

Seen/Heard/Read

Lindsey Stirling. Night Vision

Lindsey Stirling has released a new music video! Oh joy! Repeated viewing and sharing of opinions required. What’s different in this video is that she integrates a promo for her upcoming 2016 summer tour (in the U.S. and Canada, plus one stop in Berlin at Lollapalooza this September, according to her official website). Go, Lindsey!

Considering how busy she is and how much mind-blowing output she regularly generates, the additional promise of a new album leaves me tingling with anticipation and admiration as well. Both of her previous albums still feel fresh and energetic, and listening to them on repeat is something my week cannot do without.

But back to Night Vision. This is one of my favourite tracks, because the way the music sounds and the way the various violin tones come together, especially the lower ones, make images of nighttime landscapes pop up in my mind, and fluorescent lights were in there as well. So it’s exciting to see Lindsey incorporate just that in to her music video. Not to mention the nods to superwoman themes, the action genre, and clearly Mission Impossible. Lindsey becomes her own super-violinist, dancing and playing her way through a laser maze in a black leather suit to let fans know about her news.

Strong, graceful, spunky, sharp of step and quick of bow – in short, Lindsey Stirling.

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Seen/Heard/Read

Dying for You by Otto Knows (feat. Lindsey Stirling and Alex Aris)

Somebody told me you had given up on your smile

Plenty of very satisfying reviews have been written about this fantastic track, and after listening to it on repeat for a week, I thought I’d contribute my own review of the music video. In my humble, non music critic style.

The excitement I feel every time a new musical release involving Lindsey Stirling comes out is addictive. This video delivers and once again shows that she is a performer to be reckoned with. The fact that she is an instrumental artist, as well as her masterful grasp of numerous genres and unique interpretation with her violin music make it possible to integrate her playing in practically any collaboration. At the same time, she not only showcases herself, but compliments the artists she works with on a given project, bringing out the best in all those involved. Different talent coming together requires good choosing, and happily it looks like “Dying for You” is a result of just that.

A pianist plays inside what looks like a roomy, abandoned church or cathedral, while Alex Aris begins to sing the story, not with hopelessness, but with mounting force. To me you don’t have to keep hiding away who you are/ Remember how we said together we would go far. It could be a love story, it could be about friendship – the lyrics seem comfortingly suitable to multiple interpretations.

When all you have is doubt, know that I’m around/ I will be dying for you, dying for you.

And then Lindsey appears, gathering power with her violin. In those scenes where we don’t see her, we hear her, always, as soon as she starts playing. It’s like straining for something familiar that’s reaching your ears from a distance, and then bam, recognition, this is it! She plays, and oh boy, it’s an explosive, terrifically executed speedy violin frenzy.

The color and light scheme of the music video play up the expected associations with “dying” in the track title – black, grey, beige, brown, switching between what might be a cloudy day outside to darkness, in which Lindsey’s auburn braids dance like flames around her pale, chiselled face while she does her signature twirling.

The theme of an impending mini-apocalypse surrounds the visual aesthetic of the video, but rather than drag the viewer down, it adds a note of raw reality, as well as making you think of destruction clearing the way for creation, like a forest being naturally reborn after a fire.

I will be dying to hear this one again for a long time.

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The Only Pirate at the Party. By Lindsey Stirling and Brooke S. Passey

Lindsey Stirling is one of my favourite artists on the planet. So when I heard that she was co-writing a memoir with her sister, I knew at once that I would have to get my hands on it. It must have been the fastest pre-order I ever placed. When it arrived, I read it in a day.

The book is a crowd-pleaser for her fans, just as her performances are. It’s all that Lindsey is herself: lively, warm, attentive, dedicated and sparklingly engaging. It’s also a written extension of her talent to observe, process and create.

The relationship with her sister and co-author Brooke is a guiding factor throughout her life, work and the book. In fact, some of the most interesting chapters, besides the ones about her work and life as a performing artist, are those where she talks about her family and siblings. The searing depiction of the influence of her eating disorder on her life and how she reclaimed being a sister left me floored, blinking back tears.

I nearly jumped when I read the the title Chapter on my Young and Carefree Drug/ Alcohol Escapades – was there something I had missed? To everyone’s relief, and subtly pointing out certain expectations regarding famous people, Lindsey writes, “I have never done drugs or consumed alcohol, so this chapter is really short.”

As happy and as positive both her personality and her work are (not without effort), several chapters of the book are darkly honest, though while being direct, the stories and struggles Lindsey touches on are not delivered to shock – they are part of the journey that led her to being herself, and she chose to include them.

One can’t help feeling admiration for the amount of work Lindsey put in, continuing to tour and make videos while working on the book with her sister, especially considering the devastating loss of her keyboarder and close friend Jason Gaviati to cancer shortly before the book was published.

The Only Pirate at the Party is full of moments both heart-wrenching and endearingly funny. There were times when I wanted to shout, “Lindsey! Don’t base anything you do on some of those mean comments! And certainly not on those reviews in the paper! They just don’t get it!” or “Don’t you see, those other musicians were just jealous of you!”

I was very fortunate to see Lindsey play live two years ago. The keen feeling for beauty that she carries inside herself translates not only to her art, but to the way the book is written. By the end of it you understand who this girl is, and why she is the only pirate at the party.

I hope she will always know just how incredibly, uniquely gifted she is.

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