When asked to pinpoint the date that the full seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic dawned for me, personally, I tend to use the March 17, 2020, launch of Music Scholarship at a Distance (MSaaD or #MusicColloq for short)—a virtual daily colloquium series that I co-organized with fellow musicologist Will Robin. While just a few days prior I had been negotiating spring-break travel plans, the cascading announcements of institutional closures, travel and other restrictions, and conference cancelations led us to set up the series in just a few (frantic) days. MSaaD—though relatively small in scope and casual in tone—thus became an early harbinger and prototype for the myriad virtual conferences and other professional events that would be undertaken across the next few years.
Music Scholarship at a Distance was an early instance of a wave of virtual programming that arose in the wake of the pandemic's shutdown effects. It was originally...
