Line-up

Headliner
My Brightest Diamond Last time in Detroit: 1 month ago

Venue

Ypsilanti Freighthouse

100 Market Place, 48198, Ypsilanti, MI, US

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Additional details

Tour name: My Brightest Diamond

Doors open: 18:30

My Brightest Diamond is the moniker of Shara Nova, a classically trained vocalist and self- taught multi-instrumentalist whose music is as dazzling as it is shape-shifting. Since assembling the project in 2006, Nova has consistently resisted genre conventions, blending elements of rock, art pop, and chamber music into a sound unmistakably her own.

Raised in a family of traveling evangelists, Nova spent her childhood crisscrossing the country, her father leading church choirs and her mother playing organ. When the family settled outside Detroit in the early ’90s, she absorbed the sounds of hip-hop and soul filling the airwaves, alongside the likes of Samuel Barber and Bach in her high school chamber choir. After studying classical voice at the University of North Texas, Nova relocated to New York City, where she formed My Brightest Diamond, producing six bold and genre-defying albums, each inhabiting a distinct musical landscape while remaining anchored by Nova’s singular voice. My Brightest Diamond closes the Freighthouse residency with this performance.

Alcohol will be available for purchase for ages 21+ with ID.

Concert in your area for Indie & Alt, Folk & Blues, and Pop.

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My Brightest Diamond biography

Shara Worden is the heart and soul behind the indie rock band, My Brightest Diamond. Formed in 2006 now with a handful of studio albums to their name and much critical acclaim, it’s no surprise that they have developed the reputation that they have.

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.

Live reviews

Sometimes, it’s easier to go by a pseudonym than your own name; for one, it can deflect the typical expectations associated with being a singer-songwriter, and for another, if you’re going to properly flesh out the sound of your music anyway, it might be no bad thing to create the illusion that you’re actually a fully-fledged band. You’d have to imagine that this was probably the thinking behind Shara Worden’s decision to go by the name My Brightest Diamond when she began recording her own brand of folk-tinged indie rock back in 2006; the native New Yorker has certainly gone from strength to strength since, collaborating in high profile fashion with contemporaries like The Decemberists and Sufjan Stevens - on The Hazards of Love and The Age of Adz, respectively - as well as releasing four records in her own right, all of which have fared impressively commercially and, often, rapturously in critical terms. Later this month, Worden will release her fifth full-length album, This Is My Hand, and is already announcing worldwide, full-band dates in support of it; this is a singer-songwriter at the very top of her game - catch her now before the mainstream comes calling.

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