Christopher Ball (born 7 July 1936) is a British clarinettist, composer and conductor
Ball was born in Leeds, England, and studied clarinet and piano at the Royal Manchester College of Music where his contemporaries included Harrison Birtwistle (a fellow clarinet student), Peter Maxwell Davies, Alexander Goehr and John Ogdon. At the Royal Academy of Music he studied under Jack Brymer, Reginald Kell and Gervase de Peyer and took part in conducting masterclasses with Pierre Monteux, Constantin Silvestri, Sir Charles Mackerras, Norman Del Mar and Sir Georg Solti (which was televised). In the 1970s Ball went on to hold a conducting post at the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden.
Keenly interested in early music, Ball founded the Praetorius Consort with a group of like-minded professionals including the oboist and recorder player Paul Arden-Taylor.
In the 1990s Ball increasingly devoted himself to composition, and completed concertos for recorder, oboe, flute, clarinet, and violin. These works have since been commercially released. His sixth and seventh concertos (sixth for cello and seventh for horn) will be released in September and November of 2011 respectively.