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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Stirling stretches self to achieve own style

Violinist-dancer gains fame, stays proud of YouTube roots

Lindsey Stirling brings her particular performance style to a sold-out show at the INB tonight. (Associated Press)

Lindsey Stirling has had an unusual journey from obscurity to stardom. She’s been a reality TV star, a YouTube sensation and a touring live performer.

Her musical style is unusual, too: She plays the violin, but she also dances, often at the same time. Her music combines elements of classical, hip-hop, pop and rock, and her stage show employs complex choreography and elaborate sets. She’s not an easy artist to pigeonhole.

Stirling recently wrapped up a tour that took her to Europe, South America and Asia, and after a short break, she’s heading back out on the road this week.

“It’s these little windows between tours that are the most hectic,” Stirling said. “I got home from finishing up last year’s tour and I went straight into rehearsals.”

But this leg of the tour, which lands in Spokane tonight, is different from the previous one.

“I have new dancers, new choreography,” Stirling said. “Last time I had two guy dancers who were very hip-hop based. Now I have four female dancers, and they’re very lyrical based. We’re still doing some of the hip-hop stuff, but a lot of the dancing is just so beautiful. So my dancing style has changed as well, and that has a huge impact on the overall visuals of the show. … There’s just more diversity in this show than I’ve ever had before.”

And there’s more demand for Stirling’s shows, too: The concert was originally scheduled to be held at the 1,400-seat Knitting Factory, but it had to be moved to the 2,700-seat INB Performing Arts Center, where it sold out.

Stirling first came to prominence as a contestant on the 2010 season of the NBC competition series “America’s Got Talent,” where she was dubbed (perhaps simplistically) a “hip-hop violinist.” As she progressed through the competition, Stirling’s routines became more complicated: In her last appearance before being eliminated, Stirling performed a choreographed number with several backup dancers while playing her own arrangement of Taio Cruz’s R&B hit “Break Your Heart.”

The show’s judges, who had praised her early performances, weren’t so kind during her final appearance: Piers Morgan told Stirling she either needed to play the violin or dance, not both, while Sharon Osbourne was of the opinion that the routine simply wasn’t good enough “to fill a theater in Vegas.”

“That experience, interestingly enough, was my first time really dancing and playing the violin,” Stirling said. “I remember they told me specifically that I just wasn’t good enough to dance and play, and I remember thinking, ‘Do I stop? Are they right? Am I not good enough? Or do I just need to work harder?’ … More than anything, I wanted to prove them wrong so badly. I can do this, I am good enough. I wanted to show them and America and myself and my family who was there and saw it all happen, and that gives you quite a lot of motivation.”

But Stirling’s star rose significantly after she started uploading original content to YouTube. Her channel “ lindseystomp” has more than 6 million subscribers, and her music videos have racked up more than a billion combined views.

“I had no idea that I would have millions and millions of followers,” Stirling said. “That’s such an unfathomable number. I just hit a billion views a couple weeks ago, and what is a billion? I don’t even know. It’s kind of mind-blowing.”

She’s obviously much busier now than when she uploaded her first YouTube video, a grainy clip of her performance at a Junior Miss pageant, seven years ago. But she’s still producing new Web content, and Stirling says her goal is to release at least one new video every month.

“I tour constantly, so it’s been tough to fit in all these video shoots,” she said. “But it’s very important to me and it’s very important to my fans. I don’t ever want them to think, ‘She forgot us. She doesn’t even do videos for us anymore.’ But no, I want them to know that, at my core, I’m still proud to be a YouTuber.”