Michigan’s Shara Worden mixes primal musical energy, punk, classical training, and even marching bands, into cerebral, visceral whole note. She’s touring behind her new album, “This Is My Hand.”
Pop and Specialist: Shara Worden, aka My Brightest Diamond.
Shara Worden is an Artist (capital “A”) who embraces her contradictions.
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She’s a classically trained vocalist and composer who vibrates with punk energy. She is equally happy backed by a youth chorus, a symphony or a marching band. She’s as comfortable on the stage of a rock club as she is in an opera house. As the driving force behind My Brightest Diamond, she makes pop records that balance the visceral and the cerebral.
‘Marching Band as a Utopian Group’: My Brightest Diamond is touring North America.
“My Brightest Diamond has been about these two things — pop and specialist,” Worden told Local Spins during a recent interview. “I want Rage Against the Machine, and I want (contemporary classical composer Gyorgy) Ligeti.”
Her career has been an investigation of what separates these musical polarities — primal energy and expertise — and what joins them. Her main thesis, vastly simplified: Music is the original form of human expression. It transcends class and makes room for all levels of technical craft. “I believe music is this infinite well you can never find the end of,” Worden said.
This is, to be sure, a Big Idea that it would take far longer than the allotted 20 interview minutes to properly flesh, but we do what we can. Worden has certainly honed her craft: In addition to releasing five albums with My Brightest Diamond (including a remix collection), she has recorded or toured with Sufjan Stevens (a Calvin College alum), David Byrne, the National, the Decemberists, Laurie Anderson and many others.
She’s also scored films, written for chamber groups, lived in more cities than most people have visited, and must get sick of reading articles that attempt to summarize her remarkable resume.
MARCHING TO A UTOPIAN DRUMMER
Worden’s newest album, the critically laureled, “This Is My Hand,” came out in September and contains some of her most provocative and most accessible work to date.
Worden has lived in Detroit for the past few years, and her experiences in the city were vital to the album’s creation. In the spring of 2013, for instance, the record was mostly finished, but Worden felt like it was missing something. Around that time she had been invited to give an opening performance for Art X, an exhibition of work by honorees of the prestigious Kresge Foundation. (Worden had been named a fellow that year.)
She teamed with the popular Detroit Party Marching Band to perform a ceremonial opening at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), which moved in a processional to a nearby church for a full concert. The vibe was communal and celebratory, among the most memorable Motor City concert experiences that year.
Worden
“I had this idea of a marching band as a utopian group,” Worden said. “Everyone playing in unison is scary. It communicates, we are all of one mind. We are of one single purpose.”
The experience inspired her to write and record what became the album’s leadoff track, “Pressure,” which opens with the rolling snares and militaristic pomp of a marching band. It’s a standout moment on “This Is My Hand,” a record whose influences encompass classical, electronic, pop, rock and jazz.
Since bringing full drum and horn lines on the road is logistically prohibitive, My Brightest Diamond’s show Wednesday at the Wealthy Theatre won’t be the full-blown Art X experience. But creating a joyous shared experience remains a priority for Worden at a time in musical history when an artist’s work is likely to be streamed privately, and performances tend to be mediated by smartphone screens.
“We don’t get around a fire per se, but a concert is a place where we want to feel connected,” Worden said.
Connections facilitated by music figure strongly in Worden’s work. Another album highlight, “Before the Voice,” was inspired by a book called “The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature” by Daniel Levitin, an anthropological treatise on how music has enabled developments in human culture.
“Everyone is born musical,” Worden explained. “The parts of the brain that are musical are deeper and older than the language parts. Art is this reflection of human consciousness. For thousands of years people have created the same things on opposite ends of the world. It is the tapping into of an unseen place.”
Like we said, big ideas.
My Brightest Diamond performs Wednesday night at Wealthy Theatre, 1130 Wealthy St. SE, with Dosh and Ghostband. The show is part of WYCE’s Live at Wealthy series. Doors open at 7 p.m. Tickets $12 for members of the Grand Rapids Community Media Center, $15 in advance for the public, $18 at the door. Get tickets and info online at grcmc.org. Next up in the series: The Bad Plus on Dec. 12.
Copyright 2014, Spins on Music LLC
