How to see Lindsey Stirling's Snow Waltz 2022 Christmas tour - her most personal work yet

It's been five years since Lindsey Stirling started her own holiday tradition when she followed the release of her first Christmas album, "Warmer in the Winter," with a festive tour she built around those songs.

"It just made sense," the violinist says. "Because up until that point, I'd always done an album, then you tour it. Then another album and you tour that album."

The only year she hasn't done a Christmas tour since then is 2020. There were no tours that winter due to COVID-19.

"I didn't really think about the fact that a holiday album would me give this much bandwidth," Stirling says. "But even more so, I was like, 'Would people come back if I did it the previous year?'"

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'I want to do more Christmas forever'

What Stirling soon discovered was that yes, a lot people would, in fact, come back — because, well, people love the holidays.

"A lot of my fans have said it's become part of their holiday tradition," she says.

"And I'm not mad about it. I absolutely love doing a Christmas show. I think my whole crew has a special place in their heart for our Christmas performances. That's why I made a second Christmas album. I was like, 'Let's keep this train rolling.' I want to do more Christmas forever."

Stirling's second Christmas album, "Snow Waltz," hit the streets in mid-October and became the violinist's sixth consecutive release to top Billboard's classical music charts.

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To Lindsey Stirling, Christmas songs are like time capsules

There's a magical quality to Christmas songs for Stirling, who grew up in Gilbert and attended Mesquite High School.

"I love that there are certain Christmas songs that tie us to specific memories from our childhood or our adolescence, and they take us back," she says.

"They're like these time capsules, where it's like, 'Oh, my gosh, the Ronettes version of 'Sleigh Ride' that takes me back to my Christmas tree as a kid. So I love the idea that maybe my Christmas album, or certain arrangements I've made, will become a part of other people's memories and tie them to times from the past."

Christmas music also has a lot of depth and range one can explore in a project of this nature.

"You can take it to a super happy, joyful, bouncy place," she says. "Or you can take it to that spiritual side where you're thinking of gratitude."

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The making of Lindsey Stirling's 'Snow Waltz'

Stirling has a lot of favorite Christmas records, but she didn't let those records shape the album she was making as she went to work on "Snow Waltz." Not directly anyway.

"To be honest, the approach I took was almost the opposite of that," she says.

"Like, 'How has this song not been done before?' It was like, 'Gosh, I've gotta give people a reason to hear my arrangement. So let's let's do it in a way that it hasn't been heard yet.' And I think I actually succeeded in that goal."

She's especially proud of her Celtic arrangement of "Joy to the World" and a take on "Feliz Navidad" she calls "super flamenco with those bachata rhythms that are very authentic."

It made it more fun, Stirling says, to approach the material thinking, "Well, OK, let's listen to this and find the gap where we can make it fresh."

It was harder to choose which Christmas standards she might like to reinvent this time around.

"To be honest, a lot of my favorites were on my first Christmas album," she says. "So when I was approaching this one, I was like, 'Gosh, I took my favorites already. What am I gonna do here?'"

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Giving the drummer some shine (for a change) on 'Little Drummer Boy'

Then she started coming up with odd arrangements and that made it fun, even "Little Drummer Boy."

"I almost did that one because I didn't have a version I particularly like of 'Little Drummer Boy,'" she says.

"The drummer never gets to shine in any 'Drummer Boy' I've ever heard. It's just this very standard tap, tap-ta-tap-ta-tap, you know? So I did a version where the drummer gets to really play."

She coached her drummer through the writing of his part.

"I was like, 'If you got the chance to play your drums in a worshiping way, what would you do as a drummer?,'" Stirling says.

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How 'Snow Waltz' compares to 'Warmer in the Winter'

"Snow Waltz" is, in many ways, a very different Christmas album than her first.

"I do feel like I used my first one as a fun excuse to take a little bit of a departure from my Lindsey Stirling signature sound," she says. "I was like, I'm gonna lean into Christmas with big-band-sounding songs and little sweeping romantic orchestra sounds."

It was a fun departures, as departures often are.

"But on this album, I thought I actually want to bring Christmas a little more into my world," Stirling says.

"And so I think it has a very different feel because of that. There's a little bit of a darker tone. It's not quite as jolly. Because my music generally, I wouldn't describe it as jolly."

The title track, which Stirling wrote, for instance, has a haunting, almost Halloween-type vibe to it.

"I'm a huge 'Harry Potter' fan and I love John Williams' music from it," Stirling says.

"And 'Harry Potter' is very magical and whimsical yet dark. There's dark tonalities to the music. Also, I love Danny Elfman, who did 'Nightmare Before Christmas.' Same thing there. So I wanted to capture some of that. As I was writing, I thought, 'Oh, my gosh, this sounds like skeletons dancing to me for some reason.'"

So she leaned into that thought and made a video with skeletons.

"It was perfect because the album came out in October, so I was like, 'Let's really run with this idea.' There's a part that feels very Thanksgiving-esque. There's snow falling in it. There's skeletons. It's kind of like all the holidays wrapped up in one."

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Finding the 'Magic' in losing her father inspired Stirling's favorite song

Her favorite track on "Snow Waltz" is a song she wrote called "Magic," which features David Archuleta on guest vocals.

The lyrics began as a poem inspired by a conversation at her church.

"We were talking about the difference between happiness and joy," she says. "And what we decided was that happiness is situational, but joy comes from this internal reservoir that you've saved up. It comes from gratitude. It's stronger than happiness."

That conversation took her back to what she says was "probably the most powerful moment of my life," visiting her father in the hospital as he was dying with her sisters and her mother by her side.

"He wasn't really conscious, and we didn't know if he could even hear us," Stirling says. "But one of my sisters was like, 'Let's all tell memories of our favorite stories of Dad.'

"And as we started to do that, the mood completely changed. Before you knew it, we were crying but we were laughing. And suddenly, even though I was so devastated and it was the saddest moment of my life, I was so full of gratitude for what I had. I realized I had had a rich, fulfilling life with the best dad."

The line "Who says there can't be joy when the lights go out?" is meant to symbolize that moment in the hospital.

"I carry that with me through my life," she says.

"Although I would much rather have him here, I do believe there's a little extra amount of magic added to my life, because I believe that he's my angel now, and that he can look out for me. I just love this idea of carrying those bits of magic with you to remind yourself that life can be joyful even through the hard times."

She had to deliver the album by May to have it out in time, which meant recording Christmas songs in spring. But Stirling had no trouble getting in the proper spirit.

"I actually don't find it difficult at all to get in the zone," says. "I hear the music and I'm like, 'Oh, here we go.' I'm automatically believing what I'm hearing. So for me, it's quite natural. My favorite projects I've worked on are my Christmas projects, to be honest."

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What to expect on Lindsey Stirling's Snow Waltz tour

Stirling says she's thrilled to have new music in the Christmas show.

"That means totally new choreography, and it's inspired a whole new set of costumes," she says. "I'm actually rhinestone-ing one of my costumes as we speak because I like to do things with my hands."

Those rhinestones aren't the only thing that's new about this tour.

"Something I'm really proud of that we've worked really hard on and I've been practicing a lot is we've added aerial to this show," she says. "I go up in a hoop at one point, and I'm doing some lira work. Also we have trapeze. I think the show gets better every year. This year, I think it took a big step up, and I'm really excited for people to see it."

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She's also looking forward to diving into the creative process on her first non-holiday-related album since 2019's "Artemis" in January.

"I actually was doing that at the beginning of this year, and I was just feeling so blocked," she says.

"That's why I ended up doing the Christmas album. I wrote a song that felt very Christmas-y, and I was like, 'I'm switching gears. I need a break.' Because I was just getting nowhere with writing. I was trying to find a new sound."

So she set it aside.

"And after taking time to do the Christmas album and returning to work on new material for my next album, I found it," she says. "I think that break and working on some magical Christmas music was exactly what I needed. Because I know the sound I'm chasing now, which is half the battle. The hardest part is done. I found the style."

But first, she plans to take some time off to enjoy the holidays in Gilbert with her family.

"My mom lives there and one of my sister still lives there," she says. "So I come back to Arizona semiregularly and definitely every holiday. I can't wait. As soon as the tour is over, I'll be curled up in Gilbert."

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Lindsey Stirling

When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 22.

Where: Mesa Arts Center, 1 E. Main St.

Admission: $65-$125.

Details: 480-644-6500, mesaartscenter.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Lindsey Stirling's Snow Waltz tour: When, where to see it in Phoenix