Christopher Ball is a British clarinettist, composer and conductor. He was born in Leeds and studied clarinet and piano at the Royal Manchester College of Music alongside contemporaries such as Birtwistle, Maxwell Davies, Goehr and Ogdon. His teachers at the Royal Academy of Music were Jack Brymer, Reginald Kell and Gervase de Peyer. He participated in conducting masterclasses with Monteux, Silvestri, Mackerras, Del Mar and Solti. He is reported to be interested in early music and founded the Praetorius Consort with oboist and recorder player Paul Arden-Taylor.

Musical Concepts is pleased to release the first in a series of recordings featuring Ball's tuneful, instantly accessible music. The present disc features both Ball's Cello Concerto No. 1 and folksong settings played by young Croation cellist Stjepan Hauser, who, still in his twenties, has already performed in more than 40 countries across all continents including sensational debuts in Wigmore Hall, the Royal Albert Hall, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and South Bank Centre.