The Band

Virginia Griffen

Virginia Griffen has been singing since she was able to talk. She sang in the church choir and in the school chorus as well as the high school jazz and classical ensemble. She feels she found her voice singing in the solitude of her bedroom,singing along with all her favorite artists. She studied all the nuances of her favorite voices ranging from Bette Midler to Patsy Cline to modern top 40 pop, rock, and r&b. Virginia got her start performing in a rock band when she was only 14 years old. She performed along side her father in his locally well-known band Fountainhead in their home state of Connecticut.

In 2001, Virginia joined the band Euphony with a group of people her own age where she met Jeff Sullivan. The two became great friends and Virginia asked him to play on a duo project she was doing called North of Virginia with guitarist Gabe Moreno. He agreed to play if friend and bassist Dylan Cram would play on the project. North of Virginia had more of a folk sound with a powerful rhythm section, they called it power-folk. Virginia, Jeff, and Dylan left Gabe to create Scharisma in 2003. For the first few months, they were a unique sounding 4 piece with keyboardist Jud Repko. They penned an album worth of material and later joined up with guitarist Eric Ieraci and finished their first self entitled album. Jud later left the band in 2004 for personal reasons and the band recorded their second album in 2005, New Beginning. In 2007, Eric Ieraci left the band and Scharisma hired current member Jeff Carter on lead guitar.

Virginia’s passion is now songwriting and playing music with Scharisma. She has penned well over 100 songs and continues to write on her own and with the band. Her hopes are to one day get national credit for the songs she has written and plans to continue to play with Scharisma for years to come.