Improvisation and Social Aesthetics, the latest volume in the series Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice published by Duke University Press, is a welcome addition to the ever-expanding field of critical improvisation studies. Indeed, many of the book's contributors are innovators in the field, and many are also directly involved with the international research project that inspired the book series, now called the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation, or IICSI. (The present reviewer is a Research Associate of this institute.) The book itself originated in a conference held at McGill University in 2010, one of the many symposia that generated IICSI. This brief context is important, since many musicologists may not be directly familiar with IICSI, and because a wide swath of the research coming from IICSI is beyond the range of conventional musicological discourse. Nevertheless, as the presence of figures such as Georgina Born, Lisa Barg, and...

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