Jean-Luc Godard said:

“a story should have a beginning, a middle and an end,
but not necessarily in that order”

 
For most of my post childhood / youth I felt life as a series of fragments – joined together by time, by circumstance, by love, fear, hope and a feeling that whilst experiencing existence as a fragmentary condition – through art the fragments can take on a structure that gives reassurance and meaning.

In my 20s I created a porous document called fragments and now as I have begun my 50s I find myself doing something else that I call fragments but now with a greater sense of purpose, and a deeper connection with others.

53 Fragments / in five parts – a mosaic, a kaleidoscope, a patch-work about existence.

Part 1 – creation / birth

Part 2 – childhood & youth

Part 3 – early adulthood & middle age

Part 4 – old age

Part 5 – death / re-birth

It brings together pictures, words and music – by a collection of  poets, visual artists and musicians.

It juxtaposes their responses to the themes mentioned – their exploration, through their art, of the gamut of a person’s life (from the womb to the tomb).





Composer of computer music, instrumental music, and combinations thereof. Professor of Practice at Virginia Tech.

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.

We dedicate these recordings to Uncle Lewis Walker, Aboriginal elder of the Bundjalung nation of Byron Bay. Uncle Lewis is a Keeper of the Ancient Songlines of the Whales.

I am a student at Haverford College studying music and mathematics. I am a composer and pianist passionate about the intersections of music and social justice.

Tiffany Ng gives concerts for cities from the tops of towers. She is University Carillonist and Associate Professor of Carillon at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. An advocate of diversity in contemporary music, she has premiered 60+ pieces by living composers, including works for carillon and live electronics. Her concert career has taken her to fifteen countries in Europe, Asia, Australia, and North America, including the CICO Portugal Festival, the University of Chicago Rockefeller Carillon New Music Festival, Canberra International Carillon Festival, Stanford Live, the International Carillon Festival Barcelona, the Bok Tower International Carillon Festival, and the 2008 Post-Congress Festival of the World Carillon Federation. Tiffany’s research explores the carillon as an instrument of Cold War diplomacy between the Netherlands and America; other research interests include urban soundscapes and classical music in contemporary China. She holds a diploma from the Royal Carillon School “Jef Denyn” where she studied with Geert D’hollander, a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley (Musicology & New Media), a master’s degree from the Eastman School of Music where she studied with William Porter (Organ), and a bachelor’s degree from Yale University (English and Music), where she curated a museum exhibit of bells. She is former Assistant Director of the Women in Music Festival and the Contemporary Organ Music Festival in Rochester, New York, and author of the multimedia catalog of the Municipal Carillon Museum of Mechelen, Belgium.

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