Shara Nova and Matthew Ritchie

With a background in classical music, and a passion for rock music, Shara Worden jumped into the rock music pool in New York City. Whilst a student at the University of North Texas in Denton, she started honing her craft, and released an album called “Word” in 1998, with the stage name “Shara”. With a degree under her belt, she travelled to Moscow, documenting brand new songs, burning them to CDs and releasing them with hand drawn artwork. After her year abroad, she moved back to the states and had a string of gigs under the name AwRY. The music that she was creating was very experimental at the time, as she worked with Padma Newsome, an Australian native.

It was when she crossed paths with Sufjan Stevens that she found herself to be quite the Illinoisemaker, leaving her music for a little while as she performed on his tour as a cheerleading captain. Returning to her own music, she decided a name change was applicable and that’s when “My Brightest Diamond” was created. She started working on two albums simultaneously, “A Thousand Shark’s Teeth” which was a string quartet project, and “Bring Me the Workhorse” which had a prominent rock influence. Her new project, when on to perform on the Stevens’ tour in the autumn of 2006 to promote the album. At the beginning of 2007, My Brightest Diamond embarked on a tour supporting The Decemberists, on their “Twilight in the Fearful Forest” Tour. They offered a cover version of “Lucky” originally by Radiohead for the 2007 Stereogum tribute album “OKX”. Her CV was constantly gaining more and more accolades, including the rather anomalous Glee, on which she was the singing voice behind Jane Lynch’s character. On September 16th 2014, she released the album “This is My Hand” with My Brightest Diamond.