Lawrence Ball Interviews Kate On Her Virtual Book Tour

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 summer 2008 he completed his 2nd 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 iTunes as a download, and also on Amazon.

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.