WEST STOCKBRIDGE — When composer and vocal artist Pamela Z leaves her San Francisco home and heads to the Berkshires, her destination is usually one of the more widely-known cultural venues.

Over the years, she has appeared often at the Bang on a Can Summer Festival at Mass MoCA, where she recently developed a major project with Grammy-winning vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth and The Living Earth Show. She also performed a solo concert at Tanglewood last summer, bringing her pioneering creativity to that mecca of classical music.

This month, she will perform in quite a different milieu, filling the intimate black box theater of The Foundry, 7 p.m. Aug. 11, with her signature blend of vocal gymnastics and manipulated electronic sound.

Since opening in 2019, The Foundry has earned a reputation for adventurous programming, presenting an eclectic array of artists and attracting patrons interested in things beyond the obvious.

Z finds herself exploring this new territory courtesy of an encounter made far from America’s shores.

James Casebere, a visual artist she met during their 2020 Rome Prize residency, has a show at T Space Gallery in Rhinebeck, N.Y., and asked Z to perform at his opening alongside a fellow Rome Prize poet. He offered to find her another engagement while she was in the area, and suggested The Foundry, located near his Canaan, N.Y. studio.

Among Z’s many awards and honors, the prestigious Rome Prize brings together 30 American Fellows from multiple disciplines — artists, architects, musicians, writers and more. Their year-long residency was cut short by the pandemic, a bonding experience among the participants.

“We’ve all kept in touch over the years, it’s a really interesting mix of people,” Z said.

Throughout her long career, Z has collaborated with contemporary music ensembles such as Kronos Quartet and Bang On A Can All Stars.

She has performed across the U.S., from Florida to Wyoming, at Lincoln Center and Museum of Modern Art in New York City. She has also performed in Europe, Japan, Senegal, New Zealand and, recently, China.

Z performs in venues from concert halls to art galleries, mostly in metropolitan areas.

“Occasionally I get invited to places that are more remote,” she said.

While she has created many evening-long multi-media works over the years, at The Foundry she will share selected short pieces,  5 to 8 minutes long, “ranging from one-off pieces that stand alone to excerpts from larger works that have made their way into my solo repertoire,” she said.

Z cites Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Pauline Oliveros, John Cage and Laurie Anderson among her artistic influences.

“They gave me permission to experiment,” she said.

Her instrumentation, she said, “is generally my voice, live processing with electronics with a lot of layering and looping, and three different kinds of gesture-controlled MIDI instruments used to play sampled sounds in real time or manipulate the processing on my voice.”

“There’s a lot of singing involved, also speech sounds and extended vocal techniques. It’s a wide range.”

While she uses language “to hang the sound on,” it’s not always linear, legible narrative — it could be found text, made-up language, her own poetry, or a libretto of words that say something.

In an excerpt from “Baggage Allowance,” for example, “the entire text is the questions they ask you at the airport when you’re going through security.”

People, she says, often incorrectly think she utilizes the more widely-known sensor-controlled Theremin, “a synthesizer that generates its own sound and only has one voice, like a musical saw.”

Z’s instruments capture data from physical gestures, rather than a keyboard, to change the processing of her voice or manipulate computer sampling.

“I can play sounds of splashing water or glass breaking, or voice fragments,” she said, “basically whatever sound I want.”

In recent years, she has received numerous commissions from contemporary chamber ensembles and soloists. She composed several pieces for San Francisco-based Del Sol String Quartet, who have also performed at The Foundry.

“I’m super-excited to have an artist of her calibre at the space,” said Amy Brentano, artistic director of The Foundry. “This is an opportunity to see someone with those kinds of credentials up close and personal.”

“Casebere came to a couple of shows here four months ago and fell in love with the space,” she added. “He thought a solo piece at The Foundry would be dynamic with an artist like Z.”

People expect the unexpected at The Foundry due to its diverse programming, she said. With touring performers, emerging artists often return as their popularity grows.

The air-conditioned space attracts local and visiting patrons, some traveling from Boston and New York to see particular artists.

“New work is very exciting to me, it doesn’t matter so much what the discipline is,” Brentano said. “I’m fascinated by artists who are breaking molds and looking at new ways to do things.”

IF YOU GO

What: Pamela Z

Where: The Foundry, 2 Harris St., West Stockbridge

When: 7 p.m. Aug. 11

Tickets: $25, advance; $30, at door

Information and reservations: 413-232-5222, thefoundryws.com