Jack Ballard has composed, performed, and produced a variety of music, from classical, world, and film music to jazz and bluegrass to punk and hip hop. Mentors included Gunther Schuller, Stefan Kozinsky, Wendell Jones, Arthur Post, and David Maddux.
The ballet, The Castle, received the Thanatopolis Prize for Memorial Composition for its “Lament,” and Dances for violin was the winner of the GBE competition in 2010. Most recently, “Chrystalin” for violin and piano reached semi-finalist, his “Four Seasons,” finalist, in the American Prize in 2019, and finalist for “Las aguas de las montañas” for piano in the Aleanor Composition Competition.
These pieces are added to commissions for community ensembles, two years as staff music director in Atlanta with the popular PM Perspectives, film scoring, the full opera Intent and Purpose, the world famous radio plays Adventures in Odyssey, and recently in 2020 an incidental suite to the graphic novel based on MacDonald’s The Light Princess with Cave Pictures Publishing.
Probably the best-known representation of musical variety is the song cycle The Psalms, which includes such jazz notables as Alex Acuña, David Friesen, Fletch Wiley, Tom Patitucci, and members of the Oregon Symphony. “So unique and creative, it breaks new artistic ground” from National Religious Broadcaster. “A great collection:” Moody Monthly. A Fulbright Scholar and Specialist in African Music, Ballard’s pieces incorporate classical and ethnic styles from South America, American folk, Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
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