Photography by Alexander Wagner

“If you like Björk as much as Boulez. If you’re a Britton fan, call me,” implored the Craigslist ad that, in 2006, eventually fleshed out the string section of My Brightest Diamond. Until then, founder Shara Worden straddled two musical worlds: New York’s avant-garde indie music scene and that of her freshly earned University of North Texas opera degree. “I distinctly remember this summer when I’d really pushed for certain operatic auditions and didn’t get in, and I was kind of like, ‘You know what, I’m going to take this as a sign of what my destiny is supposed to be here,’” Worden says. She continued her music education informally and eclectically by studying composition with Australian composer Padma Newsome (of The National), playing in a band called Awry, and going out on tour as the head cheerleader of Sufjan Stevens’ Illinoismakers. “If you have these little creative releases of energy or alternate ideas, it creates a fertile ground for your primary project,” she elaborates. In Worden’s case, all that cultivated fertility led her to form My Brightest Diamond.

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