Fantastic Worlds: Lindsey Stirling keeps adding to her stories

Multi-talented entertainer Lindsey Stirling has been wowing audiences around the world for more than a decade with her distinct fusion of violin-driven electronic music and elaborate dance. Yet her uniqueness among performers remains unprecedented.

"No one's ever done it before, so there's no [concept] of, 'Get to this advanced level and then you do this.' So I just get to have fun and figure out as I go what could be possible," she says from her home in Los Angeles during a short tour break.

Stirling's "Artemis" tour finally kicked off its U.S. run July 1 after beginning in Europe before the covid-19 pandemic. The time off from touring gave her opportunity to create more music videos for the album and continue building the world of the album's characters, and the tour only benefited from it, she shares.

"I've always tried to bring storytelling into my shows in one way or another, and I've always really tried to kind of bring the music videos to life on stage in some way, shape or form," Stirling reveals. "But I feel like this tour more than ever, that happened. And I think it just comes from the fact of there's an actual story. It's not just isolated music videos, where it's like, 'This is a fun idea for that one.'

"Most of the ideas for the 'Artemis' music videos all come from the comic book story that I wrote, and characters and world-building that continues through from music video to music video," she continues. "So it's really fun to take the audience through this whole journey as all of these different vignettes are kind of brought to life on stage that many of the people in the audience -- not everybody, but many of them -- have seen. It's almost like they get to have something familiar in a new way, and I think that's really fun."

Some of the richly developed themes present in Stirling's music videos for the "Artemis" album and the synonymous tour include Greek mythology (the album is named for the Greek goddess of the Hunt and the Moon), post-apocalypse, ancient warriors, 20th century aristocracy and pirates.

"It's been fun to evolve the craft. I like to challenge myself every tour and try to evolve something, whether it's [something like] one tour I did magic -- I went into this magic box and appeared while playing the violin," Stirling recalls. Inspired by the Cirque du Soleil-style aerial display Stirling did in her "Crystallize" music video this winter where she hung by her hair, the performer will play her violin while doing some light aerial acrobatic work on this tour, she reveals.

"It's fun to think, 'What could I do that I've never done before, that evolves what I do?'"

Stirling is also coming off the release of her recent emotional single "Lose You Now," which stems from the instrumental-only track "Guardian" on her "Artemis" album. The pop version with lyrics added by friend and producer Mako navigates loss and grief and honors Stirling's late father as well as her best friend.

As no stranger to exploring personal battles in her own work, the pandemic, she admits, brought up new and different heartaches that Stirling guesses many people may not have faced before.

"Everybody faces pain and hardship in their own way, but you can be completely sheltered from another person's pain," she muses. From seeing so many having to confront their mental health over the past year, to learning to be anti-racist (rather than not racist) from the Black Lives Matter movement, to pursuing awareness of the Jewish community's current persecution, Stirling says it was gaining more empathy for pains she hasn't been exposed to that affected her perspective in this difficult season.

"I think it's been a beautiful time for us to all take a chance to listen and put our pride to the side, and realize that no one gets anywhere when we dig our heels in and say 'I'm right.' There's so much that comes from just listening and saying, 'That's an interesting perspective I haven't heard of.' And sometimes pride gets in the way of all of us doing that."