[5] Born and raised in New York City, Hirsch dropped out of high school and moved to San Francisco, California, where she performed with The Theater of Man under Cecile Pineda,[6] explored extended vocal techniques, and began composing pieces for voice.
[8] Hirsch performed her solo composition, States, at Alice Tully Hall in 1999, recorded it for Roulette TV,[9] and expanded it to include a chorus at the Golden Mask Festival in Moscow, Russia (2016).
She appears on the recordings of John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, Jim Staley, among 60 others, and has improvised with artists including Christian Marclay, Ikue Mori, David Weinstein and Anthony Coleman.
[10] In 2008 her piece, "In the Basement," was included on the compilation album Crosstalk: American Speech Music (Bridge Records) produced by Mendi + Keith Obadike.
Other Hirsch collaborators include Fred Frith, Greetje Bijma, Chantal Dumas, David Moss, Jerry Hunt,[6] Toshio Kajiwara, Jin Hi Kim, Marina Rosenfeld and Ned Rothenberg, as well as visual artists Barbara Bloom and Jim Hodges, choreographer Noémie Lafrance, and filmmakers Nina Danino (Temenos soundtrack with Sainkho Namtchylak, 2001), Zoe Beloff, Abigail Child, and Lee Sachs.