Lawrence Ball

Lawrence Ball grew up surrounded by music of all kinds, perpetually, in the home. He is a largely self-taught composer and musician, who began playing melodies by ear at age 4.

Ball holds a Computer Science BSc Hons. degree from London University, 1972, when he also researched and created computer-generated music.

Notable collaborations include those with The Who’s guitarist and principal songwriter Pete Townshend on the Lifehouse-Method project, which resulted in over 10,000 generated music portraits over the internet. A related album, METHOD MUSIC, was released in 2012 on Navona Records.

Over the course of his career, Ball has covered a broad palette of media expressions, scored over 200 musical pieces, recorded a wide range of music including electronic, programmed computer software, and created a multitude of improvised piano recordings.

As a composer, Ball is interested in Innovation with deep meditative states in music, (including the invention of liquid rhythm) and ways of generating music (with graphics) using Harmonic Mathematics — a math of aesthetics — both with and without fractals.

Ball is currently in an ongoing collaboration with Mike Tusch (www.synthaesis.com), where they develop and perform audiovisual experiences and events which deeply integrate music and visual imagery, also incorporating Harmonic Mathematics.

Ball has worked with sarod player Lisa Sangita Moskow and Sri Lankan vocalist Manickam Yogeswaran on improvised music based on North and South Indian raga scales.

His musical output is usually self-initiated and presented in Planet Tree Music Festival alongside championed composers’ work (e.g. Kaikhosru Sorabji, Jean Catoire, Alan Hovhaness, Keith Barnard, James D’Angelo). The Navona Records 2016 album ENERGY DIAMOND showcases selected festival performances of his music.

Ball has performed in over 10 different countries including a concert on composer Ciurlionis’s piano in Vilnius, Lithuania. He will have composed eight symphonies and counting by 2023.

His compositions have been performed by a wide range of performers including:

Pianists: Carlo Grante, Nicolas Horvath, Giusto DiLallo, Mark Swartzentruber, Javier Negrin, Tim Ravenscroft, Alessandra Celletti, and (the late) Yonty Solomon.

String soloists: Robin Ireland (violist – Lindsay Quartet), violist Neil Davis, cellist Rosa Bugarin, and (the late) cellist Susan Rennie.

String Quartets: Smith Quartet and Solem Quartet. 

Vocalists: Rosemary Forbes-Butler and Sarah Leonard.

Small Ensembles: California Ear Unit (septet), various ad hoc quartets and septets, and Rosy Voices (female vocal quartet).

David Bowie organized the first public performance of Ball’s electronic/rock band Snowfish (Soft Machine with electronic music), featuring Charles Hayward and Adrian Segar in 1969 at the Beckenham arts lab.

“METHOD MUSIC by Lawrence Ball, released in 2012 on Navona Records, hailed by Pitchfork for its “wondrous, rippling, and startlingly tactile music.”

“And pieces by Ball… — including the delightful Waterfall, and Brightness demonstrated skills usually lacking in unreconstructed tonal composers, and imaginative and entertaining ways of elaborating simple materials.” — Keith Potter (author, American Minimal Music and reviewer) The Independent, U.K.