Two years ago when someone recommended that Lindsey Stirling reach out to ARKAI, a New York-based electroacoustic string duo, Stirling was immediately on board with the idea. The legendary genre-blending violinist primarily worked with producers who came to writing sessions with set backing tracks and were too nervous to recommend changes to her violin melodies. She rarely got to work with other string players.
“I was so excited to collaborate with someone who spoke my language,” Stirling says to Billboard about ARKAI. “We did a writing session, and afterwards, I was like, ‘That was so fun.’ My little string heart was exploding.”
ARKAI — which is made up of violinist Jonathan Miron and cellist Philip Sheegog — was equally as excited to work with Stirling. The two instrumentalists, who met as students at Juliard and have been making music together for almost eight years, looked up to Stirling for a long time.
“Lindsey Stirling is an icon for the string community, because she showed us all what’s possible,” says Miron. “She showed us how we could take the old instrument, this violin, and bring it into mainstream sensibilities.”
The synergy between the three musicians was instant, and in the two years since they’ve met, they’ve continued to cultivate it. ARKAI and Stirling regularly get together for writing and jam sessions. Last year, ARKAI joined Stirling on her “Master of Tides” cruise, a multi-day music festival at sea.
Most recently, the trio performed at the Gold Gala, an annual event that brings together leaders from across industries to honor Asian Pacific and multicultural trailblazers. During their set at the Gold Gala, ARKAI and Stirling debuted original music on stage for the first time — a reimagining of ARKAI’s song “High Noon,” off their Grammy-winning 2025 album Brightside.
Billboard sat down with Stirling, Miron and Sheegog to talk about their Gold Gala performance, what it’s like working together and what the trio is most excited for next.
You all just performed at the Gold Gala. What did it mean to you to take the stage at an event all about celebrating API identities?
Jonathan Miron: The Gold Gala is kind of like the Met Gala for the Asian community. So to get invited and to be featured at an event like that was a dream come true. Philip and I kicked off with a medley of iconic Asian soundtracks, and then Lindsey joined us on stage, and that was our first performance ever with Lindsey playing an original song. All these things coming together — we are still pinching ourselves, it was a crazy experience.
And to look out into the audience, they were honoring people like Eileen Gu, and Jet Li. These are people we’ve seen on the screens. These are people we’ve seen kick ass at the Olympics. It’s unbelievable. And for us to be able to share our own music with these people is really an incredible honor.
I didn’t get to attend the Gold Gala, can you tell me more about the song you performed and why you wanted to debut it there?
JM: The song is called “High Noon,” and it’s off of our recent Grammy-winning album [Brightside]. So we have the version that Philip and I created together. But when we were in the studio with Lindsey in New York, we were like, “Maybe there’s a world where Lindsey would want to hop on one of our existing songs.” Philip and I were already planning on putting out a deluxe version of the album with some amazing collaborators, and we were like, “Well, Lindsey would absolutely slay on ‘High Noon.’”
PS: The original version, as many of our originals are, is like a massive cinematic IMAX experience. It’s explosive drums and huge synth walls and then our violin and cellos are screaming on top. But the melodic hooks were the things that we thought were the core, the DNA, of the song — something that can be translated. And so we asked, “What would happen if we kind of pulled [the hooks] a little bit towards Lindsey’s aesthetic? Make it a little bit faster, a little bit more dance pop-infused, a little more electronic-infused.”
It’s the combination of our two worlds. Hopefully when a fan listens to it, they say, “That’s Lindsey, but it’s also ARKAI, and it’s the two together.” It feels like a really great first thing that we’ve now put out into the world at this performance, and now we’re just really excited to see how people respond to it.
What is it like composing music all together?
Lindsey Stirling: It is unlike any other process I’ve ever done. Usually you’re working with guys that have tracks or maybe they’re playing piano. But there’s something about the reverberation of strings together that actually makes your heart swell. Maybe I’m totally biased, because I’m a string player, but we’ll just start jamming, and it’s so fun because we’re not locked into a tempo. We’re just playing, we’re feeding off of each other’s melody. And we record the whole thing, so we’ll go back and find the parts we love and then we’ll turn them into refined melodies. It’s so fun to write with them. I would do it any chance I get.
PS: Since Jonathan and I, for the last almost eight years, we’ve been a duo, we basically have only written with each other. We write, arrange and produce all of our own music, so we know each other inside and out at this point. We know how each other think, our tendencies and how we play. But now we’re adding in another creative voice, who is at the same time very similar because Lindsey is a string player and we speak that same language. But she also has her own unique vocabulary, style, melodic and rhythmic tendencies and sensibilities. And so throwing that new element into the creative mix that we’ve been working in for years at this point, I think that was really, really fun, because it keeps you on your toes.
Is “High Noon” a one-off or the beginning of more recorded music from you three as a trio?
LS: We’re gonna definitely do more together. We are doing some tour dates this summer in select cities throughout the U.S., so we’ll get to perform it more together. And we actually worked on some music for my album that will be coming out hopefully next year. I would love to have their voices on it.
I always kind of wondered, when you hear a violin baked into a track, would you be able to differentiate mine from somebody else’s? And it’s so true that we really all three — not only does the cello have its own voice — we all play very differently. We have a different way of expressing, we play different kinds of melodies. Everybody has their own voice and I’m excited to not only have “High Noon” to release this year, but also, next year, another track.
You all fuse classical sounds with more modern ones and in doing so, you show younger audiences that there are so many possibilities with string or other classical instruments. What does it mean to you all to introduce new generations to these worlds?
LS: For me, it’s always been really important to give people that kind of an option. I remember when I was a kid, there wasn’t much to play. It was classical music and maybe fiddle music, and there wasn’t really any other option. I remember I never wanted to perform at the talent show, because I was like, “Everyone will be bored.” So now, I would love for kiddos to feel like they could play something that maybe feels a little bit more contemporary, and they can be cool.
I also really hope that it goes beyond just string players. I hope that by being authentic and outside of the box, that people realize that whatever they do, they can they can reinvent themselves, they can step outside the lines — whether it’s being a feminist in a society that doesn’t support that or it’s sharing your poetry that’s really different. I just hope that everybody feels like they don’t belong in a box.
JM: It means everything to me and Philip. We feel so lucky to have had someone like Lindsey to look up to. She really did show us what’s possible. When we started doing our own thing, we were like, “You know what? If Lindsey can do it, maybe we can do it as well.” And I think that’s what we hope to leave with with young people, young musicians. And exactly like Lindsey said, it really translates across so many different disciplines and professions — this idea that it’s okay to think outside of the box and do your own thing. I would argue that now more than ever, society is going to require that out of people. With automation and AI and all these different things, we’re going to need new ideas. We’re going to need people doing different things, and that’s how you stand out. And so what we hope is that maybe our stories can inspire a new generation of trailblazers.
PS: The name “ARKAI” actually comes from a Greek word that means “leaders.” And that was something that when Jonathan and I first started out, that’s what we wanted to be in the in the world of string players, and the classical world writ large. But we see ourselves just as the latest links in the chain, a chain that goes back to Lindsey and her contemporaries, which then goes back another chain to the pioneers before that. It’s this endless chain and our greatest hope is that in a couple years, we’ll see some other young group who comes up and says, “Because I saw what you were doing, I had the courage to write.” And I just echo everything that both Jonathan and Lindsey said, it’s so much more than music.
Speaking of being trailblazers, ARKAI, congratulations on winning your first Grammy! What do you think winning the award is going to change for you?
PS: To the haters who are going to hate, hopefully, it just shuts some of them up. In some ways, there are always going to be barriers and roadblocks and gatekeepers who have their own opinions, but our hope is that it is a sort of stamp of approval that shows people are willing to listen to you. Our hope is that it helps people to have the conversation, to be open minded, to be like, “Okay, we don’t exactly know where to put you in in our boxes, right? You’re outside the box, but you’ve got this stamp of approval, so we’ll listen to you.” And then hopefully, through that, they then discover something that they weren’t expecting.
JM: We got interviewed right after the Grammy, and one of the things I said was that I really hope that for people who have faced rejection — we have been shunned from different rooms — that this is a moment to see what is possible when you follow your heart and you take risks.
I hope that it’s just another indication of what is possible. Philip and I are indie musicians, we’ve built everything pretty much from the ground up. Lindsey is the same. And so this is just an indication to anybody out there that, if you have a vision for something, a passion for doing something, if you put your heart into it, you can achieve anything.
You three have spoken so in depth about taking risks and being trailblazers in your styles of music. With the risks you’ve taken and their payoffs in mind, what is something you are excited for in the next year?
LS: Personally, I’ve been writing a lot of music lately, and writing music, ironically, has always been really hard for me. I’ve always really struggled with self negativity. And it’s been really exciting that, for the first time ever, I’m not doing that. I’m enjoying the process, as everyone always tried to tell me I can and that I don’t have to be so hard on myself. I don’t know what clicked. Maybe the years of therapy have finally actually set in. Maybe it’s the meditation. I don’t know what clicked, but I’m so happy right now, just in general.
I don’t even have the fruits of the labor yet, I can’t even see if anyone likes anything I’ve written. But it doesn’t matter. I’m really just happy and I’m enjoying the journey, not just the destination. And so it makes me just really excited for not only this chapter, but what this chapter is going to bring with with my new music. Mostly I am so happy to be happy.
JM: Music is this incredible language. It’s this universal language. It’s how Philip and I met, it’s how we connected with Lindsey. I speak for myself, and I think Philip feels the same way, but we feel so lucky to do what we do, because we get to connect with people. I’m just so excited to be able to take that to the next level — whether it’s connecting with Lindsey and creating a new track that will move people or touring around the world.
I had a friend once that said to me, “There is no other job in the world like what you guys do where people stop everything that they’re doing in the day and just be in present and listen. And I think it’s just it’s the most beautiful thing, because we can get so overwhelmed with all the the noise in the world. So to be able to come down to the most essential thing, which is connection through music, is such a gift. And I just can’t wait to do more of that.
PS: One thing that I’m excited for is just to see how our music evolves by bringing in incredible collaborators. Because, as I mentioned earlier, essentially, up until this point, Jonathan and I, we have been solely working and writing together. We’ve been allowing our sound to mature and evolve. But now I feel like we have reached that with our record last year. Now this year, we’re collaborating already with so many incredible people, and putting all these new ingredients in the dish, and we’re getting inspired in different ways and pushed in different ways. I’m excited in a year’s time to look back and say, “Wow, there were ideas and worlds that we didn’t even know were going to be open, but through collaboration, we were able to find that.”
