Yelling Choir by Maxx Katz
Portland, OR
What will contain us?
Director: Maxx Katz
Choir members: Wolfgang Black, Muffie Delgado Connelly, Diana Marcela Cuartas, Megita Denton, crow lauren jean, Diana Oropeza, Leona, Patricia Vázquez Gómez, and Danielle Ross
Access notes: There will be yelling.
Happy Hour: This unseated event is a free Happy Hour and part of TBA's BEFORE & AFTER series.
DESCRIPTION
Yelling Choir is a performance process that reimagines voice, presence, and power. Created by Maxx Katz, the Choir is a vehicle for experimental relational technology, using play, somatic awareness, and vocal practice to reform the psychosocial basis of community relationships. Performances are collaborative compositions that call for a socially aware aesthetic of listening and seeing, which frames the social relationship as a moving element of the internal composition of the piece. Recent choirs have been composed of women, femme, and nonbinary participants.
Yelling Choir shares the immediate, visceral experience of having a voice, both sonically and creatively. It is a tool for navigating emotional experience collectively, offering a creative process designed to support connection and collaboration based on deep acceptance of the many manifestations of sensory-emotional experience.
The performances created in this process are unique to each event-specific choir; they are collaborative compositions arising from rehearsals, which include contributions from every participant. Katz’s background as a composer and musician in jazz, new music, contemporary classical, noise, and heavy metal, as well as mindfulness and awareness practice, supports an inclusive, surprising aesthetic that is accessible to performers with varying degrees of formal training. Yelling Choir scores offer an alternative to some of the oppressive narratives and values implied in culturally dominant forms of Western art music. In addition to the use of extended vocal technique, we de-emphasize some of the more familiar aspects of choral music: instead of melody/harmony, we focus on texture; metronomic rhythm is replaced by the rate of change of patterns, emotional shifts, and relational shifts; instead of uplifting synchrony and tightness, we highlight the mobility of complex social dynamics; and rather than familiar song structures, we move towards open formats with room for fluidity, structured improvisation, and collaborative composition. Performances demand a socially aware aesthetic of listening and seeing. Physical and social relationships are a moving element of the internal composition of every performance. Our vocal approach includes but is not limited to yelling; when we do yell, we use physically supportive techniques and consult with a yelling specialist. We also incorporate movement and site-specific use of space.
Yelling Choir has debuted compositions at the 2024 Oregon Contemporary Artists' Biennial, the American Choral Directors Association Northwest Conference, Congress Yard Projects, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and ACRE Residency. Katz has led Yelling Choir workshops at Banff and ACRE as well as Portland State University, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Inward Bound Mindfulness Education teen and young adult meditation retreats, and Portland Public Schools.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Maxx Katz is a composer, musician, and performance maker based in Portland, OR, whose work draws on vocabulary from free improvisation, performance art, jazz, contemporary classical, and heavy metal. A classically trained flutist with an MA in Music from the University of Virginia, Katz uses flute, electric guitar, voice, and movement as instruments of radical transformation.
They have toured extensively across the US, Europe, and Canada as part of various collaborative and solo projects. Katz was a resident at the 2019 Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music with Vijay Iyer and Tyshawn Sorey, and Atlantic Center for the Arts with flutist Nicole Mitchell. They compose work for ongoing ensembles including Yelling Choir and Floom.
Katz has been commissioned by the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble and the 2024 Oregon Contemporary Artists' Biennial, and has created work in collaboration with musicians and dancers including Tyshawn Sorey, Linda Austin, Tahni Holt and Muffie Delgado-Connelly, John Niekrasz, Julian Otis, lauren jean crow, and Eddie Bond.
Their Yelling Choir project has debuted compositions at the 2024 Oregon Contemporary Artists' Biennial, the American Choral Directors Association Northwest Conference, Congress Yard Projects, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and ACRE Residency. They have led Yelling Choir workshops at Banff and ACRE as well as Portland State University, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Inward Bound Mindfulness Education teen and young adult meditation retreats, and Portland Public Schools.