She worked closely with many contemporary avant-garde music composers, including Luciano Berio, Bruno Maderna, John Cage, Henri Pousseur, Sylvano Bussotti, Darius Milhaud, Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, and Igor Stravinsky.

As a composer, she wrote Stripsody (1966), in which she exploits her vocal technique using comic book sounds (onomatopoeia), and Morsicat(h)y (1969), a composition for the keyboard (with the right hand only) based on Morse code.

The elder of two children, she spent the first 12 years of her life in Attleboro, then the family moved to New York City in 1937 where she graduated from Manhattan's Julia Richman High School for Girls.

Although she had appeared in several student productions, radio broadcasts and informal concerts during the early 1950s, she made her formal debut in 1957 at Incontri Musicali, a contemporary music festival in Naples.

The following year her performance of John Cage's Aria with Fontana Mix in its world premiere, established her as a major exponent of contemporary vocal music.

The original US cover illustration for the album (resembling the Beatles's single "Revolution") was by Roberto Zamarin while the UK's was by Gerald Scarfe.

[3] Sylvano Bussotti, John Cage, Hans Werner Henze, William Walton, Igor Stravinsky, and Anthony Burgess[4] also composed works for her voice.

Although Berberian was based in Milan from the time of her studies there, she taught at both Vancouver University[clarification needed] and the Rheinische Musikschule in Cologne during the 1970s.

Although the ideas were developed along with Luciano Berio during their collaboration on works such as Visage and Sequenza III, Berberian championed the concept and descriptions of the "New Vocality" which became a major part of her philosophy of performance and legacy as an artist.