Dr. Louis Ballard is a composer of Cherokee and Quapaw descent whose works are performed regularly by major symphony orchestras, choral societies, chamber music ensembles and ballet companies. His credits include major premieres at Carnegie Hall, Smithsonian Institution, and Lincoln Center, to name just a few. Ballard also produced, directed and composed the music for the nation's first all-Indian halftime show at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington, DC.
Ballard was honored as the first American composer to present a concert of his music in the new Beethoven-House Chamber Music Hall adjoining Beethoven's birthplace in Bonn, Germany. As well, Ballard has been honored with grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts. A Lifetime Musical Achievement Award was presented to Louis W. Ballard from the First Americans in the Arts, February 1997, in Beverly Hills, CA.
Ballard was born near Quapaw, Oklahoma, and studied music theory at Oklahoma University and Tulsa University, earning the BA, BME and MM in music composition; Doc. Music, h.c., from the College of Santa Fe and William Jewell College. His family forebears include a Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and a Medicine Chief of the The Quapaw Nation of Oklahoma with Scottish, French and English antecedents. As a composer, music educator and award-winning music journalist he is devoted to the values of Native American culture.
"It is not enough to acknowledge that American Indian music is different from other music. What is needed in America is an awakening and reorienting of our total spiritual and cultural perspective to embrace, understand and learn from the Aboriginal American what motivated his musical and artistic impulses."
-- Ballard