In her senior year at UNT, Shara Nova ('97) received advice from her vocal teacher, the late Laurel Miller, that would have a profound effect on her singing and her values.
"One thing she would say is, 'If there's only one person in the audience that understands what you're doing, you should consider yourself very lucky,'" Nova says. "I never wanted to take for granted that feeling of reciprocity that happens with an audience, and to know that it's rare."
The vocalist and composer has taken that advice into a career known for its versatility and innovation. She leads the chamber band My Brightest Diamond, with its new album Fight The Real Terror, featuring the song "Have You Ever Seen An Angel," coming out in September.
She arranges music for symphonies and chorales from around the world. One such arrangement, for the song "This is a Life" from the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once, was performed at the 2023 Oscars ceremony. She collaborated on three works that were nominated for Grammys in 2024. Earlier this year, she played electric guitar and sang in the Broadway production of Illinoise and took part in the Tony Awards ceremony.
With that workload, she does not wait for inspiration to come to her.
"There is no waiting. There is only a deadline. There's a period of input and contemplation in order to alchemize all the things that the artist is feeling and to produce a song. Out of that, there is in breath and out breath."
When she was studying at UNT in the mid-1990s, many independent bars and coffee shops lined the Fry Street area. About three to four times a week, she could be heard singing at Kharma Café, Jim's Diner or Cool Beans, as well as the annual Fry Street Fair.
Nova, a vocal performance major, also absorbed the cultures of UNT Opera and the jazz studies program in addition to working in the Music Library.
The late Paul G. Bonneau ('90, '95 M.M., '03 D.M.A.) spotted her as a songwriter and mentored her in composition. She also watched her friend, drummer Earl Harvin, who attended North Texas from 1985 to 1987, perform in jazz and punk clubs. He's played in her band for 30 years.
"All of those concerts allowed me to develop as a songwriter and to be influenced by punk and jazz. It's inextricable that the environment in Denton deeply impacted who I am."
She came back to campus in 2021, composing a baroque masque for 100 musicians for Infinite Movement, a live musical performance that was part of the unveiling of the public artwork Shadow Garden by Matthew Ritchie.
"It was an absolute thrill to be able to come back to North Texas as a composer," she says.
After college, she lived in Moscow before moving to New York City, where she performed as the band AwRY with UNT guitarist Shane Yarbrough, who attended UNT in the 1990s, while working on various projects, including writing music for a couple of plays and directed by Simon Hammerstein (grandson of Oscar). Her UNT singer friend Steve Wilder ('93, '98 M.M.) had gone on to study at Yale and introduced her to composer Padma Newsome from whom she began to study composition.
Then in 2004, she was asked to collaborate with acclaimed singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens on his album, Illinois, which used her string quartet.
"I think the lesson I would like to share with folks is to say yes to lots of different kinds of work," Nova says.
She founded My Brightest Diamond in 2003, releasing five albums and five EPs, and she contributed to projects by David Byrne, Laurie Anderson and The Decemberists -- all while composing for choruses and orchestras.
This spring, she performed in the musical adaptation, Illinoise.
"Never, 19 years later, did I think that that album would take me to Broadway. You don't know how your work is going to come back to you years later. If it's a good project and good environment to learn, even if sometimes you make little or no money, it is good to keep in motion. To put yourself in the environment you want to be in. Your efforts come back to you, and in surprising ways."
The musical was nominated for several Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and won Best Choreography and Nova performed at the Tonys ceremony.
But in Illinoise there were hard lessons to learn. The show had gone through a heartbreaking experience when its stage manager, Thom Gates, died suddenly during its second week of production. The loss made the cast keenly aware of each other and made Nova think deeply about what kind of energy she brings to places she works in. Thom had been the cast's biggest cheerleader.
"I see because of Thom's example that we can actively decide to create a collective environment that is imbued with kindness and encouragement. It is from that place of warmth that incredible creativity can emerge. As a cast we learned that if the baseline in the room is that kind of generosity, we can witness each other in great pain, at our limits, and work through that struggle to discover what is next."
