Brightest Diamond My

Brightest Diamond My

PHOTOS BY SHERVIN LAINEZ WORDS BY KATE ZALIZNOCK

MY BRIGHTEST DIAMOND (REAL NAME SHARA NOVA) IS A VOCALIST AND

MUSICIAN WHO DEFIES GENRE CONFINEMENTS TO CREATE HER

EVER-EVOLVING SOUND. BORN INTO A FAMILY OF TRAVELING

EVANGELICALS, SHARA’S CHILDHOOD WAS SPENT ON THE ROAD

WITH HER FATHER, WHO LED CHURCH CHOIRS, AND HER MOTHER,

WHO PLAYED THE ORGAN. SHARA SETTLED OUTSIDE OF DETROIT

AS A TEENAGER AND STUDIED OPERA, AND SUBSEQUENTLY

MOVED TO NEW YORK CITY, WHERE MY BRIGHTEST DIAMOND WAS

ENKINDLED. WE JOINED SHARA IN CONVERSATION ABOUT HER

CREATIVE GROWTH, HER LATEST ALBUM (A MILLION AND ONE),

CULTURAL ACTIVISM, AND MORE. THIS INTERVIEW HAS BEEN

EDITED FOR LENGTH.

What’s your favorite thing about performing live? I think it’s the possibility of exchange in the moment. I think my favorite moments of the audience are where there’s this magic thing that you can’t put your finger on, which is perhaps love, perhaps listening or the power of play where maybe the goal moments have social meaning; I guess is what I’m really looking for.

What’s been your favorite space to perform in? Carnegie Hall or the Pyramids. The Great American Music Hall in San Francisco has certainly been a magic space… I think the trick is having the right kinds of material for whatever kind of space you’re in. And that’s the tricky thing: this kind of music sounds like shit in this concert hall. You can’t play your hit song. It’s like “your hit song sounds like crap in this room.” So changing the material is part of the fun game of composing or being a songwriter.

When you perform live, are there any songs that you either no longer perform or that you perform differently because of the space between now and when you wrote them? Yeah. I had a primary relationship in my life…that person committed suicide, and so a lot of the early music was really very much about me processing death, and a lot of those songs are very, very difficult. Even still, they are time capsules, and of course you’re looking in the past, but they still hold cellular memories. When you sing those songs, it does take you back to an emotional… like watching the same video or something inside yourself. And so a lot of that material, I don’t go back and play that stuff.

I’ve been listening to you for over a decade now, and I’m curious how you would describe the evolution of your career over the years? What are some of your major shifts that you have made, and what’s the story behind some of those? That’s a great question. I’m also always trying to understand that too. I guess I would say that as I understand that My Brightest Diamond albums, they have been experiments in the way that space works, which is the same venue. So as a person who loves rock music, and classical music, and rap, and hip hop, and soul – loves a lot of different kinds of things – I think I made the decision very early on to try and create frameworks for myself. And those frameworks around the record – let’s say the first album was like “strings in the rough” band, and then wanting to expand that instrumentation and expanding that orchestrally, then realizing how frustrating that was with trying to ask violins to be loud and drums to be quiet. And then the third album was like surrendering to acoustic music, really, and also to a concert hall space, then getting frustrated with that limitation and saying “what’s the loudest thing I could do?”. I want to play with marching bands because marching bands can move in space: we can be outside, we can be at an outdoor rock festival and be 3D and give people a surroundsound experience. And realizing that as fun as that was for This is My Hand, I hadn’t addressed song form because I had been so enamored with, kind of dealing with sound and orchestration for this album I was like “okay, four people, that’s it,” and no bells and whistles. I would say with my classical side of things, there’s been a kind of

trajectory of working with choral music because I’m a songwriter. At the core of what I am, I’m a songwriter. And so it’s easy for me to write choral music and songs and now I’m working on a project in Cincinnati for next summer (in August) with over 400 musicians (10 different choirs) and creating a piece on gentrification. So suddenly, I’m able to write songs and co-create with the community about what concerns they have and facilitate the issues that are arising in the community and create a kind of processional through this

highly gentrified area in an outdoor park. So there’s this funny and beautiful kind of expansion of where my work is heading now. It’s sort of taken 15 years of playing around with all of this different instrumentation and suddenly this year will be the first time that kind of all of these skill sets are being used in a single performance, so it’s kind of a…man, I’m a kid in a candy store.

What are some of the key themes on your latest album? What would you say are the key messages,? I think the key messages deal with feelings of certainly personal transformation. I got divorced and that was something that I never thought would be in my life, and what changes were required of me… going through that and coming to a place of looking at what I wanted my life to be and looking at the places that I felt oppressed by. I think those are definitely themes in “Champagne” and “Another Chance” and even with a song like “Sway,” which is sort of overtly more about global warming, but it was also about my own personal waters, getting to the point where I couldn’t find land and then saying “Okay, I’ve got to get on this boat and I’m gonna figure out how to navigate life.” And that means pick up the oar. Yeah, we’re looking for the magicfairy rainbow, but in the meantime, do your laundry. (laughs)

How do you see trends in technology impacting music? Do you think we’re at risk of losing our appreciation for what formerly would always be referred to as instruments but now we have to say “traditional” instruments because there are so many digital elements that you can create, obviously, a whole song without a single traditional instrument. How do you see the advancements in technology impacting music?

We have the possibility for infinite timbre; the portal for timbre is now. It’s like we’ve walked into a completely different universe, which is super exciting. We have walked into a space where you don’t have to have music education; you have to have a sound, and you can make beats and you can write a song. So what that has opened up is the reminder for all human beings that we are all musical by nature first. You don’t have to be this highly specialized, highly trained person to remember your humanity. Which is to say: you are musical.

Who are some of your favorite visual artists?

I come back to Matthew Barney a lot, Diane Arbus is also somebody that I love. I love Robert Park Harrison; he’s very imaginative. Anselm Kiefer, another painter. I love Cy Twombly. Got to see some of his work a couple of months ago; that was really impactful. My friend, Tim Fight, has also been a big influence on me.

And the last question: Who are some emerging musicians that we should know about or that you would recommend?

Oh, I love Hanna Benn. She put out an EP a couple months ago. She’s lovely, lovely, lovely. She’s a beautiful composer. There’s this guy in Michigan I’ve been listening to, Tunde Olaniran, and he’s going to tour with us in May. I really think his music is really great.