Move Up, Move Back, Make Space, and Take Space

“There are definitely moments in the performances where people bring some really big shit. And, where do you put it? Put it here. Put it in the performance, but the space will hold it. It’ll do whatever it’s gonna do. There’s a whole range of what people are bringing into it. But it tends to be perceived as quite intense, which it is and it’s also not. 
I just love the absurdity– the sheer cosmic thrill of absurdity and humor, which are also so involved in the whole thing…”
Maxx Katz

Recently, I’ve been tempted by the idea of being loud. As someone who expresses themselves sometimes quietly, I think the idea of yelling and screaming may act as a cathartic release. Since this growing interest, I’ve had several colleagues and friends share with me “The Yelling Choir”, a vocal group which practices the art of yelling. I wanted to interview Maxx Katz, who founded the vocal group, and try to understand the absurd, expressive powers of yelling at the top of our lungs.

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Gwen Hoeffgen: Maxx, thank you again so much for agreeing to do this interview– I’m so excited to talk to you about your work. So, as you know, I am very interested in your project, The Yelling Choir. Could you tell me how the project came together? What motivated you to create this group? 

Maxx Katz:  I was at an artist residency in Florida and they had a little introductory session for everybody and I’d shown just a video of me. I think I was playing the guitar and yelling and then afterwards there were 5 different women who came up to me and asked me if I could teach them how to yell. I was like, “okay, sure.”  So I put together a little workshop. I figured out some things we could do, and I taught three different kinds of yells. 

We did some hilarious yelling exercises. We would ask a yes or no question and respond, but we yelled our answers.  We would ask, “should you dress salad?” and we would yell “NO!!!”  It was hilarious and so great. It’s so interesting because there are a lot of people who don’t know if they can yell. It seems like there’s this initial barrier to get through, so it can be so exciting when people find their yelling voices. For some people it’s extraordinarily liberating. 

Gwen: I totally understand that. I think that’s one of the reasons that I’m very attracted to this idea of “The Yelling Choir.” I feel like I’m a very quiet person and very timid and shy at times. It’s so interesting for me to try to understand why I feel this way, and why others in society feel this way. Are women socialized to be more timid? I feel less empowered when I feel quiet, and the thought of playing with the idea of being loud is fun for me. 

Maxx: Yeah, I was also super quiet.  I was the quietest kid on the planet. I would never have thought I would do vocalizing of any sort in public, much less when I was younger, and now here we are. And it is obviously often very gendered in our culture but sometimes it’s not, you know, like there are plenty of non-women who also want to learn to yell and it’s really important to them. 

Gwen: After doing the original yelling workshops, do you continue to use the same kind of techniques within the Yelling Choir rehearsals? 

Maxx: Occasionally I’ll do workshops and I’ll have a pretty similar structure to what I originally came up with. It’s definitely evolved. I do workshops that are just one-offs for people, but with the ongoing group, it’s different now. We’re often really focused on whatever performance we’re going to do. But also, there’s so much to the choir.  It’s using the voice but it’s also using the “voice” –where it’s like creative processing, creative flow and just generating things. If we have enough time in rehearsals, that’s where a lot of the juice is. We play around with voice, with movement. A lot of the process of the Yelling Choir for me has become about creating a somatic template for belonging and community, and using that social engagement system to support people’s being in a creative flow place. It’s kind of balanced between intellectualizing and embodied subconscious processes and finding a way to get into a play zone with people and see what comes out.

Gwen: That’s the goal, isn’t it? To find a sweet spot sort of multi-brain community, that you feel supported by, and that you feel safe around, and that you’re able to make things with.

Maxx: Multi brain, yes. Multi brain, multi body. Yeah, totally. 

Gwen: In the past, I worked as a dancer and the work that I do in my visual art is about the body, our movement, how people carry themselves and hold emotional experiences within the body. So I wanted to ask you about whether movement comes into your practice organically or if it’s a conscious decision to use movement in this way. I’m really fascinated right now with the link between movement, the body, and sound. 

Maxx: It’s very intentional to use movement for a number of reasons. First off, moving at all helps turn the inner-critic brain off. Especially for people who aren’t trained vocalists, it can feel really vulnerable to use the voice at all. So, throwing movement in there just helps to grease the whole mechanism. I did this workshop once with Meredith Monk, and she talked a lot about the whole linking. And she had some exercises about linking movement and vocalizing. The way that she did it was almost like Qigong. There were some very gentle, specific movements along with different sounds. I wouldn’t particularly use that style myself, but it was very interesting. Anyway, I have a vision that is still obscure to me about what being fully embodied would look and feel like, especially in a performance. And of course there’s movement involved. It’s like being able to actually be fully whatever this being is, and whatever the performance space is. What is that? How do we try that out? I don’t know, there’s a lot of wiggling that I’m doing as I’m saying this that probably won’t convey in the written interview. 

Gwen: Yeah, it’s very worm-like, I think–the process of trying to figure it out. I was in a class the other month and we had an artist with a background in performance who was speaking to us. And, a student asked, “how do you feel confident in your body?” It’s a really important question. How do we feel like we are actually a part of our bodies? And especially in the way that we move, and express emotions through the body. How do we do that? I think it’s connected to the way that we vocalize too. I mean, the voice is realized due to vibrations and movements.  

Maxx: Yeah, the voice does something.  Even just getting the vibrating going, I often just use it to get out of a freeze response. A lot of times I’m stuck in a little bit of a freeze, and I’m not alone in this. Just using the voice at all, it helps. And then if we can get into movement, that’s helpful too. But both together, that’s a power pack combo. 

Gwen: And that’s true, too, you’re not alone in this. It’s one thing to vocalize and move in isolation. But it sounds like a big piece of the Yelling Choir is that it’s in communication. The group is able to be heard and to listen.  

Maxx: Yes, the community piece is huge and also for me kind of difficult. I don’t often feel comfortable in groups or with people, so I wanted to create a community that I would feel comfortable in, which involves a certain amount of freedom of expression and authenticity and just liking people. But also the practices of the choir and the structure of the rehearsals– It’s mostly about check ins and snacks. We do some playing around, too. We have a shared cause, and it has become a community of people in the flavor that I like, and some other people would like. In the practices there’s these elements of embodiment, awareness, expression, like emotional processing and there’s also these practices of exchange of attention, of taking up space, so while someone’s taking up space, there’s someone else holding the space. And then you flip back and forth. 

And there’s this polyvagal theory, you know, this nervous system regulation theory. And it says, as you start to speak at all, there’s this nervous system brake that has to let off. And then when you go back to being quiet, it comes back on again. So, sometimes people get stuck in one position or another. Being able to move fluidly in space– Move up, move back, make space, take space, in groups. It’s being part of it and also having a lot of others be part of it. That’s the way I think of it. It’s a crucial part of the whole practice. We’re practicing the skills to be in community together in a way that allows tolerance and inclusion.

Gwen: It’s interesting to think of what that looks like in a physical and spatial way. 

Maxx: And to practice it, literally practice it, body, voice, being in space with people.

Gwen:  Have you thought of ever extending the project more? I recently listened to a documentary about Bill T Jones and his survival workshops. I thought the way that he explained his relation to the workshops was so beautiful. I’ll paraphrase, but he basically said that he was just someone who needed their hand held. And for you, similarly, it seems that your community is serving an intimate need. Have you ever thought of extending the project into more public spaces? 

Maxx: Yeah. Definitely, I have. I’ve written grants that I haven’t gotten for larger projects that involve a lot of people. I mean, it can be hard. You can only do so much community building in a larger group, given the scale of where we’re at here. So, I’ve been keeping workshops somewhat small and just experimenting with how many people can really be in the space. But if there’s less focus on that, like with a shorter event, with more people, I’m definitely trying to figure out what that would look like and how to make it happen.

Gwen:  So how are the performances? What is it like sharing this group with a live and reactive audience? 

Maxx: It can be really varied.  I tend to focus a lot on space and what the context of the space is. Outdoor performances versus indoor performances are different. And then is the audience in chairs or are people free to move around? It turns out audiences tend to be a little blown away by the intensity of it. 

Gwen:  I can imagine. 

Maxx: With yelling, people tend to bring so much of their own perceptions to what the yelling is about, so to speak. And I remember playing metal shows and I would yell just from sheer joy and power. I remember this one metal show, this guy came up to me and was like, what are you so angry about? And I was like, “I am not angry at all, motherfucker.” But yeah I think because there’s so little experience of public intensity and yelling, it can be perceived in a number of ways. There are definitely moments in the performances where people bring some really big shit. And, where do you put it? Put it here. Put it in the performance. The space will hold it. It’ll do whatever it’s gonna do. There’s a whole range of what people are bringing into it.

But it tends to be perceived as quite intense, which it is and it’s also not.  I just love the absurdity– the sheer cosmic thrill of absurdity and humor, which are also so involved in the whole thing, which I feel leavens it a bit. That may or may not come across. It kind of depends on the context and the venue, really. Some people that see the show are super energized after and they feel like super in their body and just like really awake and they want to try yelling stuff. And then, some people need a break. I remember talking with some kids after a performance and they had so many great questions. They were very curious and really trying to figure it out. 

Gwen: Yeah, I think the act of vocalizing can be perceived in so many different ways. I’m interested in understanding my voice and vocalizing. And I had this idea about going outside and screaming as a group. This was right when the election was happening, and you could tell on our campus, there was this collectively pent up energy. You could feel it, like it was thick. So, I said, “let’s just go to the park and scream.” And even just me saying that seemed to be perceived in different ways. I think it’s an association. To me it seems cathartic, and I think it may not be that way for everyone. And then, of course, having an audience screaming in a public setting is a little scary too, I think. 

Maxx: Another interesting thing that happens with the audiences is some people kind of create their own context and some people are thinking, “Oh, they’re yelling at me.” And some people are like, “Oh, they’re yelling with me,” or, “They’re yelling for me.” People situate themselves in vastly different ways. I was teaching somebody ages ago, like before this whole yelling choir business. We were in an apartment in Brooklyn, and we were on the balcony. And we were working on some yelling out into the courtyard, and from across the way, someone yelled back, “Are you okay??”

And there was this one time at a campground I was doing a little yelling workshop with some people. But, beforehand, I went around to every campsite and was like, “We’re just gonna do a little friendly yelling down the way. Nothing to worry about. Feel free to join in.” And that just did wonders for the reception. So, just telling people in advance a little bit is helpful. But, really, I haven’t figured out how to frame it yet, honestly. 

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Maxx Katz is an artist, composer, and performer based in Portland, Oregon, whose work draws on vocabulary from performance art, free improvisation, jazz, contemporary classical, and heavy metal. A classically trained flutist with an M.A. in Music from the University of Virginia, Katz uses flute, electric guitar, voice, and movement as instruments of radical transformation. 

Katz has been commissioned to create work for the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble and the Oregon Contemporary 2024 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.

They have toured extensively across the U.S., 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.

Their Yelling Choir project has debuted compositions at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s Time-Based Art Festival, Oregon Contemporary 2024 Artists’ Biennial, the American Choral Directors Association NW Conference, Congress Yard Projects, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and ACRE Artist 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.

Gwen Hoeffgen is a visual and social practice artist who currently investigates the physicality of emotional experiences, and how those experiences live within the body waiting to be released. After receiving her bachelor’s degree in psychology, she worked as a social worker in the mental health, addiction, and cognitive health fields, and then received her MA in Drawing at Paris College of Art. Currently, as an Art and Social Practice MFA student at Portland State University, she use mediums of painting, drawing, photography, sound, and conversation to explore how we find stories within pieces, creases, breaks, and bends.