Displaying items by tag: lindsey stirling

SARATOGA SPRINGS – As an artist, Amy Lee is restless, as all artists with anything worth saying must be: searching; growing and endlessly re-defining.

“Challenges,” she says. “Pushing myself to the next place. At this point in my career, the challenges are the fun parts.”

Seeking a different path led the lead singer and co-founder Evanescence, perhaps surprisingly, down a road previously traveled. Once there, she discovered secret passageways with untainted, offshoot roads that pointed to some new place. She named this synergy between past and present “Synthesis.” An album was released last November and the summer leg of the tour - which features co-headliner Lindsey Stirling – will play the big stage at Saratoga Performing Arts Center on July 28.

The show includes the added dimension of a full orchestra – an orchestra not touring with the band mind you, but rather, a different orchestra with an entirely new set of musicians on each night who will perform with the band.

“It makes for a very high-energy, tightrope-like feeling and in a very beautiful way different every time,” Lee says. “It creates these very raw, vulnerable and quiet moments where you have to just be so comfortable in your own skin that you totally focus and make beautiful music. That’s what makes it so exciting to me, to do something so different.”

The band first meets the orchestra on the day of the show during soundcheck where they’’ll run through parts of three or four songs then collectively perform live together for the first time in front of a live audience. Some live collaboration between Lee and Stirling during each of their respective sets is anticipated as well. Setlists from the early part of the tour indicate songs that span the band’s career from 2003 to 2018, as well as an occasional nod to the Beatles “(Across the Universe”) and Ozzy Osbourne (“Alive”).

As nerve-wracking and exciting as staging a performance in front of a live audience for the first-time may be, Lee says the addition of an orchestra creates “an electronic, awesome, cool different world.” Allowing her imagination to run free, Lee says she can envision some of her own favorite bands doing likewise.

 “I think it would be really good to see the Smashing Pumpkins do that. That would lend itself to it very well. And Portishead - Oh, that would be incredible! I’ve always gotten a lot of inspiration from Bjork and if I could go see the way she did “Vespertine” back in the day (2001) – it was sort of in this realm between the electronic elements and the orchestra.”  

Evanescence formed in the mid-1990s and released their debut album “Fallen” in 2003. Commercial success was immediate; the album topped the charts in more than 10 countries and sold more than 17 million copies worldwide. Lee, the group’s sole original member in the band’s current incarnation, was tagged as a goth-metal superstar in Victorian dress.

“After our first album, ‘Fallen,’ I felt a serious urge to push us forward and show other sides. It was good, but it was just this bud, this beginning picture of all that I wanted to express and all that I am. It became important to show something else. I always want to keep that open, to try new things,” she says. “To the degree that ‘Fallen’ was so huge, I felt almost frustrated that no matter what I did there’s a mass of people that are going to see me in just that one, simple, first way.”

Over the course of the band’s career, the business of music and concerts has drastically changed. Lee has changed with it.  

“We used to have lighters that we’d hold up in the audience, which was so beautifully romantic and sweet. Then people got cell phone with those lights which are so much brighter. I remember when that first started to be a thing, every artist was complaining, ‘Ah, they’re like zombies, they’re not even paying attention to the live show,” she recalls.

“We always want people to live in the moment, to live in the show, but I do take it as a sort of compliment: that they want to capture it, they want to remember it, they want to live it again. At the same time, we have this moment during special shows where we’ll have this… moment. One person with a cell phone and their light does it, then somebody next to them does it, then more and more and more and they all light up to make like these… glowing souls. Just this sea of light. It’s hard to explain, but you feel the magnitude as if in that moment every person is represented; everybody gets into it and it just chokes me up. Every time.”

Over the past 15 years, Lee expanded her collaborative circle to include recordings with Seether and Korn; she sang “Halfway Down the Stairs” – a song based on the lyrics of an A.A. Milne poem - for a cover album of Muppets songs in 2011, and one year later performed Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” for a Johnny Cash tribute album. In 2018, there are a multitude of creative reaches. “We’re just stripping all of my comfort zones away,” she says.

With “Synthesis,” Lee is re-imagining the band’s musical canon by collecting the shards of a melody once gifted from some ethereal place, disassembling its pieces, and then welding them with a new flame into a new composite.  

“There are parts of these songs (on ‘Synthesis’), particularly the ones I chose, where there was something about them that stood out to me, or that I wanted to push more. There was a stripping away involved and rebuilding for sure, but it’s all stemming from stuff that was all in there, underneath,” Lee explains.

“‘Never Go Back,’ for example - our first song on this album - is a very classically minded song, which is funny because production-wise it’s this heavy rock song with swatches of metal. But, it’s so related. If you think about the instrumentation and the production of music, I feel there are so many similarities between heavy, metal music and the shredders of the classical age. I mean, you could Bach up against Pantera and find total similarities,” she says with a laugh.

“I’m not saying we’re Pantera, or Bach – nothing like! But there was always this part, this big, epic beautiful bridge in ‘Never Go Back,’ that in this version now starts off the song that to me was channeling some big, classical epic drama. I wanted to experiment with taking that all the way in the other direction, seeing what it sounded like and being able to let it live in that world where it was partially born in the first place. The whole (‘Synthesis”) is kind of like that, taking things and going: here’s the other side of it that maybe you didn’t notice.”

The idea for “Synthesis” was born after Lee sat down and revisited the band’s musical history in advance of the release of a comprehensive Evanescence box set.

“I realized how proud I am of everything that we’ve done. Instead of thinking that I have to keep pushing in new directions to show everybody how different we can be, I kind of fell in love with all of it and wanted to spend a little bit of time embracing all that we are,” Lee says. “Instead of feeling that my favorite parts are the parts that I’m running from, I can go back and pour more love into who I already am. I have a new perspective on what Evanescence is and it means something to me that’s just full of love in all directions. So, I feel that’s been a beautiful turn in my heart more recently. And I don’t know what the future sound will be, but I do know it will be out of love.”

Evanescence and Lindsey Stirling will perform at SPAC on Saturday, July 28.

THE RAIN FALLS in Los Angeles, on average, once every 10 days. And despite this being one of those days, Lindsey Stirling is undaunted.

The musician, composer, dancer, performer, author, and YouTube Superstar is in the City of Angels in preparation of a two-month-long trek across America which kicks off July 6 in Kansas City, Missouri and lands at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center on July 28. Also appearing are co-headliners Evanescence. This will be no ordinary tour.  

“We’re trying to create something that’s brand new, and the only time people will be able to experience it, is during the show,” Stirling says.

She plans on delivering everything her fans are accustomed to seeing her provide - dancing and singing and the playing of music, often simultaneously – as well as injecting some moments of spontaneity that involve Evanescence. “You have two very unique artists who have very different shows but are very similar as well. That’s why I think it’s a perfect pairing. At points during the show there will also be some collaboration. There’s going to be a lot of creativity and It’s going to be really cool.”

Stirling’s self-titled debut album was released in 2012 and followed by “Shatter Me” two years later. “Brace Enough,” her third album, was issued in 2016 – a year which also saw the publication of her memoir “The Only Pirate at the Party.” An album of Christmas songs was released late last year. Exhibiting a variety of talents, Stirling recently lent her likeness to a new comic book series called “Sparrow,” has competed on the TV shows “America's Got Talent” and "Dancing with the Stars," and counts more than 10 million subscribers on YouTube.

This summer’s journey has her sharing equal billing with her musical heroes. “It’s really big for me: getting to go on tour with them and every night sharing the stage. It might sound like a cop-out, but Amy Lee and Evanescence were huge heroes of mine growing up. I had a poster of them on my wall. I remember sitting in my parents’ car the first time I heard ‘My Immortal.’ I remember being so touched by her voice, and how they combined an edgy sound with this beautiful soaring melody. As a young teenager I really think that was a huge inspiration to me and kind of the reason I wanted to make my own music,” Stirling says.

“When I started writing my own music, I took a page out of their book. I was doing dubstep and I thought: OK, how can I make this really edgy electronic music meld with my classical background? And so, a huge inspiration to me was Evanescence,” says the classically trained violinist, who grew up in Arizona.

“I had played classical my whole life – I played since I was six – and everything I played pretty much was on a white piece of paper with black notes. I was taught how to play it and how to articulate it. It was the same music that had been played for hundreds of years on an instrument that was hundreds of years old, and I was playing it the way it had been played for hundreds of years. I just got burned out,” Stirling explains. “I thrive on creativity and so I think I had just gotten bored. So that’s why I strayed from classical. I thought to myself: I’m not going to quit, I just need to re-find my passion, play the kind of music that excites me, the kind of music that I love. That’s why I started playing in rock bands and adding classical elements - not taking away from classical, but just adding my own vision to dubstep and pop and rock. It made it come alive for me. “

Making a leap from the classical world was not without judgmental repercussions.

“There are haters out there, for sure, and they’re very loud sometimes, but there are way more people that are appreciative, loving and kind to me and my art,” she says. “With the negative comments, I have to remind myself why I’m doing this. I like to tell stories, I like to make videos, I like to perform. I’m not going to be the best classical violinist in the world. I’m a violinist who gets to do what they love, share it with a lot of people and make them smile. I’m much happier doing that. “

Stirling’s memoir, which was published in 2016, has been largely hailed as an inspirational journey demonstrating her persistence, her humor, and as an inspirational tale, openly taking about her own struggles with anorexia - a life-threatening disorder due to the effects of weight loss and starvation on the body and brain.

“It wasn’t an easy struggle,” Stirling says. “I’ve been in recovery now for several years and it’s something that I know – the same way that anyone who has had an addiction knows – there’s always that tinge in the back of your mind. Most of the time I’m unaware of it. Occasionally it will come forward and remind me it’s there and would like to come forward again, and I’m like: ‘No. You’re not allowed to be a part of my life.’ I have the tools necessary now and I know how to use them to say: No. Just go away. I’m very happy where I’ve gotten to now, and I’m doing really well in that area.”

She says she shares her story with people to help provide a message that as difficult as things may appear in the moment of struggle, recovery is possible.

Not surprisingly, Stirling says getting involved in the field of motivational speaking and creating “a brand of positivity” is one of her future goals.

“I will write a Broadway musical at some point. And I’m also going to have a Vegas show,” Stirling says. “As for right now, I’m really trying to get into motivational speaking. I feel like that’s my next calling in life. I want to go out and share my message in a very upfront way and through that I want to raise dollars for charity. Those are my big 10-year plans.”