Reaching Out: Improvisation’s Potential and Limitations

Abstract

Welcome to Vol 4.1 of Critical Studies in Improvisation/Etudes critiques en improvisation. As we see from the essays and interview included in this issue, the exploration of improvisation as social practice provides a varied palette of inquiry around the themes of action, interaction, and reaching out. Investigating musical and perceptual models, pedagogical and social ideals, promotional discourses in the art world or in activism, these contributions highlight or question how improvisational practices open up new possibilities for social relations. In this issue we give pride of place to the voices of improvising artists and arts programmers whose on-the-ground work reaches out to diverse communities to stretch the aesthetic and social potential of the art form. But we also take a critical look at the utopian claims sometimes made for improvisation more generally, in essays that question the limits of improvisation as an ideal.