Improvisation, Musical Communities, and the COVID-19 Pandemic, a special issue of Critical Studies in Improvisation, Vol 14, No 1 (2021)
Special issue edited by Daniel Fischlin, Laura Risk, and Jesse Stewart.
This special issue of Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation, “Volume I: Improvisation, Musical Communities, and the COVID-19 Pandemic,” invited musicians, performers, scholars, arts presenters, and other cultural workers to reflect on the extraordinary challenges posed by the pandemic and to begin envisaging a post-pandemic musical landscape. “The voices gathered here,” as issue editors Daniel Fischlin, Laura Risk, and Jesse Stewart write, “evoke scarcity and abundance, precarity and resilience, creative wells overflowing and running dry, power and helplessness, adaptation and exhaustion.”
Published on the one-year anniversary of the pandemic shutdown, the issue features more than thirty scholarly articles, essays, reflections, testimonies, interviews, and creative offerings reflecting on the ongoing impact of the pandemic. In addition to the many community voicings included, the issue also contains three peer-reviewed articles:
- Erin Felepchuk and Ben Finley: “Playing the Changes: Improvisation, Metaphor, and COVID-19”
- Eric Lewis: “Black Time in the Age of COVID: Improvising Afrologically in both Telematic Performance and Public Health Policy”
- Laura Risk: “Imperfections and Intimacies: Trebling Effects and the Improvisational Aesthetics of Pandemic-Era Livestreaming”
Each voicing in this first volume offers unique insights into an unprecedented historical moment while also highlighting the resiliency of artists and improvisers facing into its devastating consequences. Volume II of “Improvisation, Musical Communities, and the COVID-19 Pandemic,” a special double issue, is forthcoming in Spring 2021.

Critical Studies in Improvisation, Vol 14, No 1 (2021). Cover image provided by Laura Menard
Find issue here (open access):https://www.criticalimprov.com/index.php/csieci/issue/view/417
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
karmy (March 23, 2021). Improvisation, Musical Communities, and the COVID-19 Pandemic, a special issue of Critical Studies in Improvisation, Vol 14, No 1 (2021). Working in Music. Retrieved May 11, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/vas3

