Creative Capital

Brooklyn-born vocalist, composer, and interdisciplinary artist Shelley Hirsch is electrifying audiences around the world. The New York Times has dubbed Hirsch “a woman of 1,000 voices,” and since leaving home at 17 those voices have been heard on five continents in hundreds of concerts of improvised music, on dozens of cds, in her radioplays, and her compositions such as States (1996) and The Vidzer Family (1993).

As a performer, Hirsch has always been intrigued by people’s stories and how they got to be who they are. In fact references to stories of people in her life are evident in her mostly solo evening-length staged pieces including My Father Piece (2000), The Passions of Natasha, Nokiko, Nicole, Nannette, and Norma (1994, a collaboration with visual artist Barbara Bloom), and the multimedia autobiographical piece O Little Town of East New York (1991).

Her latest project, A Rupture in the Order of Reality, reflects these interests and furthermore explores issues of identity. A multidisciplinary musical performance, Rupture is made up of autobiographical tales, streams of consciousness journeys, historical “facts,” as well as questions. In it, Hirsch takes the audience on a journey where, in her own words, “the universal and the personal, the sublime and the mundane, the religious and the secular, humor and pathos, poetry and documentary, intersect, coexist, and collide.” Hirsch will sing and speak in real and imaginary languages drawing from a large palette of extended techniques and singing styles. In addition, she will interact with live animated text, video projected visitors, and turntablists spinning an assemblage of Hirsch-made musical samples which will serve as her memory triggers.

Equipped with a voice described as “capable of constant transformation, an unlimited fantasy and a masterful, anarchistic sense of culture,” Hirsch’s ability to mix music, visuals, and text, stems from complementary infatuations. Sound, for example, inspired her at an early age. As a young girl growing up in an apartment building in East New York, Brooklyn, Hirsch was mesmerized by the variety of sounds, conversations, and music drifting into the hallways. It was here that her particular aesthetic was born. In fact, the precocious youth started putting on shows for her neighbors in the courtyards and stairwells of the buildings where she lived.

All the Way with Jim and Shell (2002), an interactive installation made in collaboration with visual artist Jim Hodges, and For Jerry (1996-99), a series of site-specific multimedia performance installations and virtual duets in homage to the late great Texan, composer, video and performance artist Jerry Hunt who died in 1993.

“I love to take people on a journey they might not go on on their own and have them trust enough to suspend disbelief,” she says. The journeys Hirsch offers are rare indeed. As composer and performer Anne Le Baron wrote in her essay “Reflections on Surrealism in Postmodern Music,” “Her methods go beyond conventional definitions of composition and performance. By violating logical, linear narrative forms, by opposing elements from our known world in disturbing ways, she plunges herself, and her audience, into collective reminiscences so visceral that they seem almost visual—a surreal accomplishment in itself.” Clearly these trips are worth taking.