DANVILLE — When your father is a national accordion champion and your mother is a classical organist, music as your vocation is practically preordained.
Such is the case for Shara Worden. By age 5 the Michigan native was performing publicly, by 8 studying piano.
“For about 2 seconds I thought of being an artist or painter,” said Worden during a recent phone interview, shortly after a European tour with her current project My Brightest Diamond. “But I don’t have any other aspirations (besides music).”
Worden has been composing her own music since childhood, but ultimately earned an opera degree from the University of North Texas.
“My song writing wasn’t developed enough for me to realize I probably would’ve done well in a song writing program or arranging/compositional program,” she said. “Those things weren’t developed in me enough for me to even be aware there were schools you could go to for that.”
To compensate, Worden moved to New York soon after graduating to immerse herself in the city’s inclusive music scene. She would attend four and five shows a week and perform at open-mic nights.
“I knew New York would have a whole bunch of different things going on, which is why I wanted to move there and be influenced by it,” she said. “I tried to see as much as I could of what was going on, and allow myself to go in different directions because of that.”
Worden says the resulting exposure had a profound impact on her song writing, particularly seeing artists like Antony & the Johnsons and Rebecca Moore combine seemingly antipodal music forms.
“They were the first people I saw using strings with alternative instrumentation in a club,” she said. “I saw this was something available to me too.”
It’s the concept at the heart of My Brightest Diamond. Their sophomore release, “A Thousand Shark’s Teeth,” is a cornucopia of gently-strummed instruments and Worden’s dulcet voice. But what started as a string quartet record soon ventured into more pop territory with guitar and dense, ambient-manipulated sounds.
“Having a sense of lightness was important to me,” Worden said. “There’s a lot more in the arrangement than you’re hearing. We would end up sacrificing some of my favorite chords because the bigger picture was more important. The feeling is always the more important thing.”
Delving into such experimentation has made Worden the kind of beatnik she’s long admired. One that draws audiences from multiple music spectrums.
“I like finding sort of fringey characters, be it in the rock world or just people doing something, I don’t know, extreme maybe, or particular, specialized,” she said. “You can find that in rock and certainly in classical too.”
Such evidence has convinced Worden that, contrary to statements by the Rolling Stones, rock & roll is not dead.
“Rock is about an attitude of independence,” Worden said. “I don’t think that’ll ever leave humanity. If you want to say rock is three chords and a Marshall amp, well, OK, that’s already been done. But if you look at it from a more philosophical place, it’s about this visceral energy and being independent.
“Music is going to keep changing and growing and developing. We have to be willing to allow it to do that.”
———
Online:
www.mybrightestdiamond.com
Just the facts
WHO: My Brightest Diamond with Clare and the Reasons and Marla Hanson
WHEN: 8 p.m. Nov. 6
WHERE: The Royal Theater, 59 S. Washington St., Danville
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Shara Worden has found firm footing in both rock and classical music through her current creative vehicle My Brightest Diamond. / Photo by Julian Bourgeois
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