Paul Pfeiffer, University of Georgia Redcoat Band Live
Monday, November 11, 2019
For the Performa 19 Biennial, Paul Pfeiffer will present his first live performance in collaboration with The Georgia Redcoat Marching Band from the University of Georgia, at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. Fifty band members will perform in this legendary venue, recreating a two-and-a-half-hour musical score from a typical game. Simultaneously, the rest of the 400 strong band will perform the same score inside an empty stadium in Athens, Georgia, to be live streamed into the Apollo.
The performance is the culmination of years of research undertaken during Pfeiffer’s tenure at UGA. During this time, Pfeiffer filmed the details and underlying structures of the Redcoats performances, observing how the band punctuates the game with starts and stops, determined by the pauses in game play. By exploring the Redcoats role as the soundtrack to one of America’s most popular mass rituals, Pfeiffer considers the emotional affect of live music, and the constructed nature of collective experience.
