Shelley Hirsch is an American vocalist, performance artist, composer, and improviser born on June 9, 1952, in Brooklyn, New York. After moving to San Francisco to explore extended vocal techniques, she relocated to Berlin, where she performed her first free improvised concert with Sven-Åke Johansson. Hirsch is recognized for her multi-disciplinary work, including the album Haiku Lingo (1989) and the radio play “O Little Town of East New York”, which won the Prix Futura in 1993 before its 1995 CD release. She has collaborated extensively with artists such as John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, and Christian Marclay, and created the role of Cassandra in Robert Ashley’s opera Agamemnon. Hirsch performed her solo composition “States” at Alice Tully Hall in 1999 and the Golden Mask Festival in 2016. Her awards include a DAAD Residency (1992) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2017). In 2025, she released the album Vanish.
