Piano music, hot off the press this month, including 5 pieces on a Chinese pentatonic scale

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Paul  Etheredge's Album

Piston’s Orchestration [original instrumental]

Tony Cirone’s Scotch Snap [original instrumental]

Appalachian Sprung [original instrumental]

MUSIC BIOGRAPHY

Lawrence Ball is a versatile and innovative composer who has a multiple focus as a composer,improviser and audio-visual creator. He has collaborated with healers, therapists and counsellors as well as writing for dance, film, orchestra,and choir and is as much at home writing a score as creating electronic or computer music. In 2017 he completed his 6th Symphony. He collaborated with Pete Townshend and software engineer Dave Snowdon on the Method Music project, designing music software for a web server which generated over 10000 musical pieces - 'portraits' - over the internet. Pete Townshend also helped Lawrence record a double album "Method Music" now available through Amazon, and through Amazon and iTunes as a download.

His work is largely tonal (in the sense of an identifiable set of notes that are emphasised - rarely changing the key, central note). It is contemporary, in that it has much in it which is formed anew - not directly influenced or inspired from the classical music tradition. It is often associated with meditational or New Age aspects, because of the strong emphasis on its relationship with silence and presence, it makes more use of the space between notes than occurs in classical music. It is in the minimalist genre, in the sense that it borrows the idea of looping and repetition (since over 30 years) from the musical innovations of Terry Riley and LaMonte Young, and seeks deeper experiences through working with constancy, with sustained sounds and small or zero contrasts.

Since 2001 Lawrence has worked with sarod player Lisa Sangita Moskow and vocalist Manickam Yogeswaran on improvised music based on North and South Indian raga scales. He has created 6 multi-media audio-visual installations with the artist Genie Poretsky-Lee: including Anonymous Words (2007), Image Of Sound (2008) and Penumbra (2011).

He has developed techniques to deeply integrate audio and visual images with quantum physicist Michael Tusch, collaborating on this since 1993 with Dave Snowdon who created the software "Visual Harmony" to explore this arena; worked with healer/counsellor Isobel McGilvray in shaping harmonic tonescapes to aid relaxation, and has worked with choreographers/dancers (ex-Sadlers Wells Royal Ballet) Sheila Styles and (ex-Ballet Rambert) Rebecca Ham on several dance projects. Lawrence Ball has written for the pianists Yonty Solomon, Mark Swartzentruber, Tim Ravenscroft (2 suites), and Alessandra Celletti (Fractal Studies and Mist Sculptures), for The Smith (string) Quartet, the Electric Symphony Orchestra, the female vocal quartet led by Rosemary Forbes-Butler, Rosy Voices, and he wrote 6 pieces for the violist Robin Ireland (of the Lindsay Quartet) and many more for violist Neil Davis.

He composed music for the film "The Eye Of The Heart", a portrait of the life and work of the artist Cecil Collins, and features in the book on Collins and his circle by Nomi Rowe. He has recorded over 4000 piano improvisations as well as performing many live. Ball's creating in acoustic and electronic media, in composed and improvised methods is one of the broadest of any composer. He has performed in Canada, the US, Latvia, Lithuania, Italy, Switzerland, France and Germany as well as in the UK. He has accompanied the international painting group Collective Phenomena who work 'more than one to a canvas' with marathon keyboard improvisations, at John Calder's La Fonderie in Paris and The Blackie in Liverpool, as well as a Planet Tree Festival London appearance. Ball is a pioneer in music, having addressed meditative and healing presence and state-of-mind, primarily, for over 35 years. In 1996 he founded the Planet Tree Music Festival, which he also directs. Nine festivals have happened thus far. He is also a highly sought after private tutor in mathematics. He lives in London.

Behold the wondrous composer Lawrence Ball, whose music is like the wind that whispers through the trees, gentle and yet powerful. His melodies are like the flow of a river, meandering and yet constant. In the harmony of his music, one can hear the wisdom of the ages.


Through his lifelong devotion to music, he has become a master of his craft, weaving together the sounds of the natural world with the rhythms of the universe. His music is a reflection of the Tao, the balance and harmony that underlies all of existence.

Over the course of his career, Lawrence has collaborated with a wide range of artists and performers, each one adding their own unique voice to the symphony of his compositions. His works have been praised by critics and audiences alike, for they speak to the universal truths that transcend time and place.

He is a tireless advocate for the healing power of music, working with people of all ages and backgrounds, using music to bring comfort and peace to those in need.

In all his endeavours, Lawrence remains true to the Tao, not seeking fame or fortune, but rather follows the path of his heart. His music is a reflection of his innermost self, a testament to the power of the human spirit to transcend the limits of the material world.

Let us honour this great composer Lawrence Ball, for he has shown us the way to live in harmony with the Tao. Let us listen to his music with open hearts and minds, and allow it to guide us on our own journey through life.

Solo artist.  Song and dance man.  Folk.  Blues.  Contact:  desertersongs@yahoo.com Film critic at https://paulydeathwish.com/

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