The Process Presents Shelley Hirsch

The Process continues its exploration of leading performers with Shelley Hirsch,an unorthodox, extraordinary fusion of vocalist, composer, and performance artist. Her long-awaited spoken word event reevaluates traditional paradigms of the genre, not by hosting a simple reading of works, but instead by offering a multi-media exploration of “words” through performance, action and film. The Process has also worked in conjunction with the Center for Contemporary Arts to host Shelley in a 3 day workshop series Nov. 18, 19, 20.

Legendary performance artist, avant garde vocalist and multiple NEA recipient Shelley Hirsch is a renowned figure in the avant garde community. Shelley is “an unorthodox, extraordinary fusion of vocalist, composer, and performance artist “(Anne LeBaron) whose work encompasses story telling pieces, staged performances, compositions, improvisations, collaborations, installations, and radioplays, which have been presented on 5 continents with collaborators like John Zorn, Anthony Coleman, Marc Ribot, Christian Marclay, Elliot Sharp, Derek Bailey, Fred Frith, DJ Olive, Mark Dresser, David Shea and Ikue Mori , just to name a few. Shelley will be bringing her 1,000 inner voices to do some rare solo pieces along with improvisational duets with local favorite J.A. Deane. Her website can be found at: http://www.shelleyhirsch.com/shelley/

“People definitely like to tie people into genre. I’m not a conventional performance artist, which is an unconventional thing about me, because I’m also a singer. I work with musicians, but I also do sound installations and things like that. The whole performance aspect is something other. I think of myself as a storyteller. Even if it’s an abstract story, there’s still that element of working with memory in some kind of narrative, even if it’s way out there.” –Shelley Hirsch, Santa Fe Reporter, November 19, 2008

Shelley will be bringing her 1,000 inner voices to do some rare solo pieces along with improvisational duets with local favorite J.A. Deane, who is another collaborator of John Zorn, Deanne has worked with everyone from Ike and Tina Turner to Brian Eno, Jim O’Rourke, Jon Hassell and Butch Morris. He now conducts the Out of Context ensemble here in Santa Fe and explores the improvisation hand signal language of “conduction” developed by Butch Morris. Dino will be performing with Shelley Hirsch.

“Witnessing a typical Hirsch performance–if there is such a thing–it’s easy to believe that everything she does is spontaneously conceived. But she’s a composer as well as an improviser.” Paul Weidemann, Pasatiempo, September 21, 2008

Their performance caps a series of presentations at CCA from a supporting cast including:

• Idris Goodwin is an award winning hip hop playwright, break beat poet, recording artist and teacher committed to making work that incites, inspires, and engages. The NEA awarded Idris a Playwright-in-Residence grant to explore hip-hop aesthetics in theater. Idris’ break beat poetry was featured on season six of Russell Simmons’ HBO Def Poetry Jam as well as the Spoken Word Revolution Redux Anthology.
• Melody Sumner Carnahan (“The most musical prose since Gertrude Stein.” — Village Voice) studied with Robert Ashley at Mills College and has published inumerable short stories and essays. Melody has received fellowships, awards and acknowledgements from the NEA, Art Institute of Chicago, New American Radio, NYC’s Experimental Intermedia Foundation, Tokyo’s NTT/ICC, Atlantic Center for the Arts, University of Technology in Sydney, Australia and the Whitney Museum of American Art. She currently runs the Burning Books small press with Michael Sumner.
• Michael Sumner co-founded Burning Books with Melody In 1979. He has published nineteen books of, and about, avant-garde music, art, and literature. He has also worked as a graphic artist and book designer, producing books for publishers and museums, including the Guggenheim Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Michael’s work has been shown in the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the San Francisco Art Institute Film Festival, the San Francisco Cinematheque, the Polyphonix International Festival, the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition and the World Print Competition.
• Rod Harrison is known by many as his alter-ego, Jimmy the Carrot, a suave, gin guzzling throwback to the days of the emcee, or from his outstanding work with Theater Grottesco, or as the sullen bee in those T-Mobile ads, or possibly as the Marquis De Rod in a HBO special about naked oil wrestling, or even as “The Voice” in Whole Foods, a character he based on Gary Owens from Laugh-in. Now you can see him demonstrate his acting prowess as the infamous hipster, Lord Buckley in a reenactment of Buckley’s debauched delivery of death defying discourses.
• j. Christopher Dupuy has worked as a Harley-Davidson mechanic, a bartender, a dj, a dishwasher, a golf caddy, a computer tech, managed an independent music store, at a temp staffing agency and served over four years in the Marine Corps. He is currently working on a play and novel which he plans to finish and publish simultaneously upon his death.
• Damon & Sabrina Griffith are known locally as the leaders of The Bullseal! Consortium, a raucous, Beefheart-esque, yet strangely euphonic bohemian ensemble spouting impossible verse, this couple have put their fingers into virtually every type of creative art known to man from crafting puppets and poetry to crafting the reality that surrounds them.
• Daniel Drell-Terkltoyser is a bemused fictive entity, residing primarily but not exclusively upon his own hard drive; an irresponsible helical VortexT, likely to wreak all manner of mischief, malfunction and malfeasance upon the lavish systems of control our seductive suburban demiurge deems sweet and useful. Carhorns blare, windshield wipers and supermarket doors operate with violent and unexpected abandon. All roads lead to Cleveland.

For more information on Shelley Hirsch, visit her website.The Process website is here.