Shelley Hirsch

First, there was the living room of my family’s apartment, where dad came home after a long day’s work, put a record on the turntable, and created enchantment. Then, there was capturing a piece of a remembered song and using my voice to release it into the echoey hallway…As I moved through the building out onto the street I was accumulating imagery and recycling narratives through my body, the recorder and storage house of memory.

My work now–conjuring locations and landscapes, finding language, streaming consciousness, forming stories as both antenna and medium–is an extension of these childhood fascinations, which I channel though my compositions, improvised vocal performances, staged multimedia and site-specific pieces, narrative radio plays and sound installations. The work reverberates inside and outside the body, in real and imagined rooms and remembered locations, for my listeners and for myself.