Lindsey Stirling and Amy Lee of Evanescence on touring together with an orchestra

Ed Masley | The Republic | azcentral.com

When Lindsey Stirling tweeted out her summer plans — a co-headlining tour with Evanescence and an orchestra — the Gilbert native included a video that playfully portrayed her as an Evanescence super-fan.

"Do I like Evanescence?" she asks at the start of the video. "Yeah, I mean I would say I'm a casual fan, especially in high school."

Then the camera slowly pans out from a closeup of the violinist's face to show her in a room whose walls are filled with Evanescence posters.

A lot responded, she says, by telling her how cute that was.

But the people who knew her in high school and college had a much different reaction.

"They texted me like 'Holy cow, are you serious?!!'" Stirling recalls with a laugh.

"Because they remember what I was like in high school and college. I loved Evanescence. And I still do. To this day, I have so much respect for Amy Lee. And getting to watch her perform every night, she’s such an incredible powerhouse. I feel like I have a lot to learn from her and what she’s done."

And the pairing is perfect for Lee.

"The likenesses are there just enough for it to make total sense," she says. "There’s the classical thing. We’re both into the orchestra. Lindsey’s a kick-(expletive) female doing her own thing, carving her own path. So am I."

And yet, their shows are very different.

"She’s got a lot of cool visual stuff going on," Lee says. "And it’s a very energetic set. She’s got dancers. She’s flying all over the place the whole time. I don’t know how she does that and plays in perfect tune all the time. It’s amazing."

Evanescence's set is darker and Lee isn't flying all over the stage.

"I’m forcing myself," she says, "to really just stand at a mic stand — I’ve never used a mic stand before — and just focus, really, on the sound of my voice and blending with all of those instruments up there."

The collaboration that led to the tour

Prior to touring together, Stirling made a guest appearance on Evanescence's 2017 album, "Synthesis." As thrilling as it was to work with Lee on that recording, it wasn't like touring together.

As Stirling says, "Sadly, the way a lot of stuff is done nowadays is remotely. Amy was in Nashville. I was in L.A."

They did communicate by phone, though, and Stirling found her childhood idol to be "super, super gracious" and enthusiastic.

When the prospect of touring together came up, Stirling says, "We have so much in common in weird ways, I knew it would be a good fit."

When Stirling met Lee's father on the first night of the tour, he told her, "Oh, you and Amy are so much alike. You kind of march to the beat of your own drummer.”

Another similarity that Stirling sees is that they're both "very specific with our art."

And one more thing. "I remember being in a venue years ago and seeing a picture of her on the wall," Stirling says. "And I was laughing at how similar our costumes were."

How Evanescence got to 'Synthesis'

The idea to tour with an orchestra grew out of "Synthesis," which featured reworked versions of earlier songs with orchestral arrangements and EDM elements in addition to two new songs, "Hi-Lo" and "Imperfection."

"Honestly," Lee says, "my vision for Evanescence from the beginning is this combination of cinematic classical influence and heavy rock."

There's always been an element of that on their recordings, and some electronic programming as well. In fact, most of the songs she writes begin with loops and programming with Lee on piano and vocals and then the guitars are added l.

"But by the time we get to the end of making every album and of course with the format or box that we’re trying to stick it in – everything has to be stuck into some kind of box – the rock element is what’s pushed to the forefront and everything else kind of falls to the background."

With this album, she says, the idea was “What if we strip that stuff back and take a moment to really magnify and expose this other side of our music, let the guitars and big acoustic drums take a backseat and let the classical influence kind of come forward."

It was a satisfying experiment, she says, to take those songs their fans already know and "show them in another light."

At the same time, she says, it allowed them to "breathe new life into those songs that mean more to me now than they ever could have when we hadn’t run 'round the world singing them. I’ve had to listen to the old version of “My Immortal” from when I was 17 for way too long and I don’t want to hear it anymore so I had to put a good one at the top of the pile."

This tour, which started last October playing theaters and added Stirling in July, grew out of that experiment.

On touring with an orchestra

"At first it was scary, to be honest," Lee says. "First of all, it’s been a dream my entire life to play with an orchestra, not just for a band but also in general. Just to be able to do that is something that’s always like 'Oh, that’s what real musicians do. I’m a measly rock artist.'”

She always figured it would impossible to make that dream come true, Lee says, because of the expense.

"I mean, how do you do that, touring with a whole bunch of extra buses and orchestra musicians who charge by the hour?" she says. "There’s no way."

But her manager figured it out.

"We just basically get a contractor and they put together different groups everywhere you go," she says. "But then, that’s terrifying too because we’re only playing together as a group that one night and it’s so much music for them to learn, especially when this version of our show in particular really relies on the orchestra. There’s a lot of very raw, exposed moments where they’ve gotta be doing it really well."

What she learned in the course of the tour, though, was that professional, classically trained musicians don't require the same amount of time in the rehearsal space.

"You kind of have to just be brave and do the best you can and hope that everyone is gonna come in like they’re supposed to," she says, with a laugh. "And nine times out of 10, they do."

As the tour progressed, she started to embrace that feeling.

"It’s easy to get, especially at this point in my career, where you can just do what you know and kind of go on autopilot a little bit," she says. "And that isn’t fun for me. I need to be challenged. I need to feel like we’re doing something new that’s a little bit dangerous."

Stirling says she never would have thought to combine what she does with an orchestra.

"At this stage anyway," she says. "But it’s been really cool. It’s awesome to have such depth to the music in a way it never has before. And also, I played with orchestras all growing up so it’s cool to now get to do it on a whole new level with my own music."

Both acts planned their set list with the orchestra in mind.

"Some songs definitely just worked really well with an orchestra," says Stirling. "And other ones, the orchestra is just more like an extra layer of support. So the music changes depending on what song we’re doing. Sometimes the orchestra is really leading the song and other times the orchestra is, like I said, supportive."

Lee says, "I wanted to make it about the songs that naturally lent themselves to this sort of classical thing. There are certain moments that are just this epic thing where I always dreamed of that being full classical and now I can go all the way with that moment."

Lee points to "Never Go Back," which opens both the album and the show.

"It very much has this big epic bridge that takes it to this classical place with the piano," she says. "So that was a natural choice. The song was never a single. It was on our third album. But it just had to be done. Originally, my list was 20 songs because there are so many songs that for whatever reason I wanted to go in and do something with. But we just sort had to whittle it down to the songs that were the most important."

'I was Lindsey and I played the violin'

In addition to playing in orchestras in elementary school, junior high and high school, Stirling also did extracurricular orchestras.

"I was that kid," she says, with a laugh. "I did the Metropolitan Youth Symphony. Like I said, I was super cool in high school. But it’s a really great orchestra program outside of school that you can audition for. I really grew a lot as a player by doing that. And it’s cool that Arizona has programs like that."

She also took part in Suzuki group lessons on summer break in Ahwatukee.

"Arizona has a really great support system for the arts," she says. "And I’m a beneficiary of it so I’m very grateful."

Stirling was accepted into Brigham Young University's music program as a performance major but had a change of heart.

"I don’t know where my passion went," she says, "but I was like ‘I just don’t care anymore.’ And that was very sad to me because I had always enjoyed playing growing up and it was part of me. It was part of my ability. I was Lindsey and I played the violin. And that was a hard realization."

Her older sister had been a music major and advised her not to do it if she wasn't sure it's what she says.

As Stirling recalls, "She said, 'I think it’ll just beat the love of it out of you even more.'"

So Stirling became a film major instead.

"And rather than quitting the violin, I was like, 'Well, I’m just gonna make it fun. I’m gonna go out and I’m gonna play with bands and I’m gonna start to dabble in writing my own music, just do it for fun.' And that’s kind of how I developed my sound."

She'd go see bands and if she liked them, she'd give them her number and tell them to call if they ever decided they needed a violinist.

"And just by playing with so many different musicians," she says, "it kind of reinvigorated my passion and I started writing music. That’s when I think I really fell in love with the violin because suddenly it wasn’t just a tool for playing what had been played for hundreds of years from white paper with black dots on it that annotates everything you’re supposed to do and how you express it. I was able to be creative and that’s what I thrive on."

What's next for these tourmates?

Stirling plans to start writing her next album when this tour is over and having spent summer playing with an orchestra could have an impact.

"I’ve been thinking it would be kind of cool to lean a little more classical on this next album," she says. "I mean I did work with an orchestra a little bit on my Christmas album. But combining that with some EDM would be really interesting and cool."

Evanescence also plan to focus on new music. But first, Lee says, "We’re gonna take a little time after this tour to catch our breath."

As to whether this experience will have much impact on the next release, Lee seems to think it could go either way.

PHOTOS OF MORE SUMMER CONCERTS 2018:

"It’s been good for me to be able to continue with Evanescence in a way that’s not the way we always have," she says, "because I don’t feel burnt out on rock. I just become what I’m doing when I make an album and it’s such a consuming experience – writing, creating, recording the album and then going on tour for the album for a year or more. By the time you finish that whole cycle, for me personally, usually I’m just tired of any heavy music. I just need a break. You get to a point where it’s like “I need something else.”

But this time is different.

"I feel inspired," she says. "And I’m kind of ready to rock because it hasn’t been that style so much. It’s in there but it’s not the same, so I don’t feel like I need to run away like I sometimes do at the end of our tours. So I don’t know exactly how it’s going to inspire the next album. Actually I think it could be a little bit of the opposite. I think we’re all ready to let the pendulum swing the other way."

Lindsey Stirling and Evanescence

When: 7 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 29.

Where: Ak-Chin Pavilion, 2121 N. 83rd Ave., Phoenix.

Admission: $25 and up.

Details: 602-254-7200, livenation.com.

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