Shari Richards, a Multifaceted Woman

From TribLive:Shari Richards' decision to diversify her music was practical while also adhering to her musical template. About 11 years ago, she started to grow weary of the atmosphere in bars, “the sonic chaos going on all the time, whether it's the volume of the band onstage, or the volume of the crowd, or the jukebox when you're offstage,” she says.When Richards was invited to sing jazz and big band standards with Rick Purcell and his Big Band, she accepted immediately, even though some of her friends and fans couldn't understand her decision.“I'm not a one-dimensional woman, so why would I be a one-dimensional musician?” says Richards, 48, of the South Hills. “Almost always, there's some element of style in the music that's authentically me. I don't really see what I'm doing as any different from what horn players or other instrumentalists have been doing for years, which is being a bit of a chameleon. .... If I'm doing a blues-rock show and then I go and play a big-band show with songs from the great American songbook, I'm enjoying myself.”