Radical Music in the United Kingdom during Brexit and the Pandemic examines the work of select composers, improvisers, and interpreters during the upheaval of Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic and places them in contemporary and historical contexts.

Each of the artists whose lives and work are discussed in the book are, to use Duke Ellington’s phrase, “beyond category.” Some are located on the fringes of jazz and contemporary classical music, while others create improvised music: music created spontaneously without template. In addition to the diversity of music they produce, the subjects represent diversity in terms of gender, race, orientation, and geographic location. Bill Shoemaker discusses the work of the London Improvisers Orchestra, Philip Thomas, Pat Thomas, Richard Barrett, Elaine Mitchener, Rachel Musson, Corey Mwamba, Charlotte Keeffe, and the Glasgow Improvisors Orchestra.

The book will enhance the reader’s understanding of radical music and its role in the evolving multiculturalism.