Twenty-four year old Latter-day Saint (“Mormon”), Lindsey Stirling, is a self-made celebrity using the power of the Internet to build a career. She is noted for her unique performances that combine the violin, pop music, and modern dance.
Stirling began playing the violin at age six after pestering her mother for lessons for a year. Her mother could only afford a teacher who taught for fifteen minutes every other week, but it was enough for this ambitious young woman. She is a classically-trained violinist who also wanted dance lessons. Since she couldn’t have those, she began watching YouTube videos and imitating the moves she saw.
At sixteen, Lindsey joined a pop-punk rock band because she wanted to experiment with a variety of musical styles and because the boys in the band were cute. Her senior year of high school she competed in the Junior Miss competition to earn money for college, winning the competition in part due to her unexpected violin rock music performed with spiky hair and high socks. She won the talent competitions at local, state, and national levels.
In 2007, she made a decision that led to her unique path to fame. Lindsey decided she wanted to be on a popular daytime talk show, so she made a music video and placed it on YouTube. It went viral and gave her a following around the world. She was invited to compete on “America’s Got Talent,” where she made it to the finals. Her YouTube channel has more than 700,000 subscribers and more than 114 million views. She has sold more than 300,000 songs on iTunes. A concert at Webster Hall in New York City sold out in just a few days.
Lindsey Stirling is a returned missionary (“Mormon Missionary”), that is, one who served as a representative of Jesus Christ on an 18-month call to share the restored gospel, and is currently a student at Brigham Young University. She embodies a confidence built on reliance on the Lord and a desire to perform and create, to magnify her talents—both reflections of her faith in the Savior and her roots in “Mormonism”—tenets of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
