SALT LAKE CITY — Lindsey Stirling played a colorful, up-tempo, highly personal and unfailingly positive show for her adopted home state Friday evening.
Stirling, the 28-year-old BYU-student-turned-YouTube-sensation, made the Red Butte Garden Amphitheatre an early stop on her recently launched North American tour. The dancing violinist glided, stomped, twirled and kicked her way across the stage with energy and grace for more than 90 minutes, keeping the majority of the sold-out crowd on its feet for the entire show.
Stirling's performance also included several moments of transparent and inspirational reflection on her past struggles. And between costume changes and rotating stage props, the Arizona native expressed affection for the state and people who helped launch her music career.
"This is where everything started for me, was in Utah, using the beautiful mountains here to film my videos," she said. "I owe it to Utah that Lindsey Stirling went viral. ... You guys have been with me from the start."
Stirling started the show with "Ascendance," from her sophomore album "Shatter Me," which recently won "Top Dance/Electronic Album" at the 2015 Billboard Music Awards. The silver-clad red-head kept it simple early, allowing herself plenty of room to roam on a mostly bare stage.
But the props came out for "Moon Trance" as Stirling danced between headstones while backup dancers played the parts of zombies.
Before launching into the number "Shadows," Stirling revealed that she had the idea for the video before she wrote the song. The performance, which featured silhouetted images of dancers in sync with Stirling, kicked off a series of visually captivating presentations. "Elements" followed "Shadows," with Stirling dancing in front of dazzling images of water and fire.
Stirling then performed along with clips from some of her popular YouTube videos featuring video game themes from "Skyrim," "Assassin's Creed" and "The Legend of Zelda."
"When I was putting that medley together, I realized, 'Wow, I'm such a nerd,'" said Stirling, who refers to the number as "the nerd medley."
The show slowed down for the reflective "Song of the Caged Bird," but picked right back up again with "Swag."
Stirling spent ample time setting up her hit song "Transcendence" with a self-revealing monologue about a challenging time in her life. She reflected on how her songs often start with "somber verses" and then "rise into these very triumphant choruses."
"I think these all kind of stem from my own life experiences," said Stirling, who explained that she hasn't always been the positive and confident woman her fans see her as.
"The truth is that several years ago, I suffered from depression," she said. "And I remember during this time, I basically fell into this hole where my life became cold and it became gray and I lost sight of everything that was important to me. And I would literally look into the mirror and I hated the mirror because I hated everything I saw staring back at me. And I realized that I wanted to change. ... The same way that I practiced the violin, the same way that I practiced my dance moves, I decided that I was going to practice being positive and practice loving myself."
"I share this with you because I have such a strong belief that we have the power to become who we want to be," she continued. " ... I know that I received so much help from God to become that kind of person that I wanted to be. That's honestly the message that I think is in a lot of my songs."
The inspirational theme was woven through the narration preceding two other hits. "Crystalize" was set up by a message about affecting change through positive words and actions, while "Shatter Me" addressed breaking free from perfectionism.
Stirling even showed her vocal talents on one number, trading a mic and violin back and forth while wearing a skirt that blinked like Christmas lights.
Stirling's encore sent the crowd home with a frenetic-paced medley of songs from the musical "Phantom of the Opera."
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