MAXX KATZ is an interdisciplinary performance artist, musician, and composer working with relationship and expectations. Using sound, movement, gender, and genre, they connect intimate emotional states to sociocultural movement and systems: how does this instant of utterly personal, sensory-emotional experience reflect and direct our larger pattern of global relationships? 

A classically trained flutist with an M.A. in Music from the University of Virginia, Katz uses flute, electric guitar, voice, movement, and relationship to support a collective mode of perception that can hold all of our full, unutterable glory. Katz has performed extensively across the U.S., Europe, and Canada as part of various collaborative and solo projects. Their project Yelling Choir 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, and Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

A member of Usaisamonster, Katz has toured extensively in experimental bands across the US and Europe. Katz was a resident at the 2019 Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music co-directed by Vijay Iyer and Tyshawn Sorey, and at the Atlantic Center for the Arts with flutist Nicole Mitchell.

FLOOM is Maxx Katz’s solo experiment in dynamic power and embodiment, melding vocals with doom metal guitar and virtuosic flute, while using silence and intentional movement to disrupt expectations of a sonic focus of the work.. FLOOM centers the flute as an instrument of radical transformation, using technology to allow it a wide swath of sonic and emotional range.

Yelling Choir is a femme, women, and nonbinary performance ensemble created and led by Maxx Katz, which reimagines voice, presence, gender, and power.

Ixnay is Katz’s performance duo with composer/poet John Niekrasz, using elements of text, movement, and theater to destabilize expectations of musical performance.

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