To create the Lifehouse-Method music portraiture system for Pete Townshend, I cranked up astronomically huge numbers of different available melodic streams. These were generated by my discovery Harmonic Mathematics, programmed for the project by wizard programmer Dave Snowdon. These giant strands of “musical DNA” were the building blocks with which I assembled the music.

In this work I was inspired particularly by two composers:

John Cage, who by allowing random decisions in his compositions, opened the field of expression way beyond the personal. This was key in my approach.

Terry Riley, who dared to construct beautifully in the new field of freedom that Cage opened up, by composing with a set of mantric loops, and allowed performers to choose when they moved on to the next one or took rests. (see his wonderful piece “In C”).

Although the Lifehouse-Method music generation is based on a carefully constructed cascade of choices, I tried to minimise the amount of human interference. (ie me).

There were many reasons for doing this. I felt that the more open I made the system, the more likely it would be to be able to cover wider varieties of types of music. Also I feel the element of surprise is paramount in a computer-generated music.

All the melodic streams in the Lifehouse-Method used looped figures that were themselves gradually changing, often with multiple copies that gradually shifted in time giving rise to cascading rhythmic interactions. This “DNA” stream of gradually evolving melodic looping underpinned the whole construction of the pieces.

Given that cyber-virtuosity of a degree and type heard on Terry Riley’s “Rainbow In Curved Air”  (achieved by speeding up recordings) and on “Baba O’Riley” by the Who (inspired by and part-dedicated to Terry Riley) was on the cards to be explored by this system, I wanted to build in both the usual human tempos, and also superhuman speeds of playing. This meant choosing types of counterpoint, that far outstripped the conventional classical combinations of notelengths. I decided to use steady streams of identical notelengths in the music for each instrument, but to design in different cycle-lengths for the loops, and also to allow situations where some of the loop (50% or 75%) would be missing.

So this was the initial concept. Looped streams of identical notes in each instrument. Then the parallel layering of different cycle-lengths, each of which could have a particular notelength. There was a chart, set out in 2 dimensions that allowed me to configure 7 types of music construction. For example in one type all the cycle lengths are the same, but the notelengths in the stream of each part can be different (eg 2:3, 1:2 or 1:3 ratio). In another the notelengths are made to be the same, but the cycle-lengths are free to vary. In a third (“hash”) there are 2 different cycle-lengths (related of course) and 2 different notelengths (also related) and the program is free to choose from any of these. In a fourth (“Manhattan”) any cycle-length in the available set can be combined with and notelength in the available set. This gives rise to a more disjointed array of interlockings.

This system included very rapid playing – which sometimes occurred in many or all instruments, sometimes in only one. Instruments also dropped in or out across the transition between segments. Certain instruments, held as more central, would have a much higher likelihood of being chosen for each segment, others less so.

This results in a very controlled use of different possibilities. I used a set of instruments from rock, classical, jazz and synthesiser pads. At times one of these genres may dominate, at others a more pan-genre orchestra results. Always very different in emphasis of associations.

I used dozens of different white note scales, incorporating scales from many cultures. Largely because there had to be parallel combinability of portraits. But there are so many white note scales: (arpeggios, pentatonics and 7-note scales) that by choosing one or a mix, a large span of possible tonalities were available. White note scales are found in almost all music cultures, and I used sometimes one tonality, sometimes more, all overlaid as white notes are harmonious to be.

In extending counterpoint way beyond human performing capability, a big challenge was how to constellate an exhaustive range or reservoir of effective musical configurations. Hopefully one day, folk will be able to listen to many of the pieces to see how well I have succeeded.

I hope this gives some insight into the Lifehouse-Method portraiture, and whets your appetite to hear the album and to one day hear more of the pieces.

Method Music – the double album – was released on January 31st 2012 by Navona Records, available on Amazon and iTunes

UK:http://www.amazon.co.uk/Method-Music-Lawrence-Ball/dp/B006CAXQ3U/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1325286870&sr=1-1

USA:http://www.amazon.com/Method-Music-Lawrence-Ball/dp/B006CAXQ3U/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1325286964&sr=1-1

Many earlier pieces informed Imaginary Galaxies. “Interstellar Overdrive” by the Pink Floyd inspired in me the use of sounds and particularly cycling sounds, to evoke the sense of remote outer space. The music of Ligeti, also well-known for its association with outer space (due in part to its use in Stanley Kubrick’s film “2001, A Space Odyssey”) and also intricately elaborated structure. To give one example “Lux Aeterna” for choir. Ligeti and the Floyd’s early singer/guitarist/songwriter Syd Barrett are both dedicatees of the Galaxies. Along with Hugh Hopper, an underrated musician and composer who is perhaps best known for his magisterial compositions and bass-playing in Soft Machine during 1969-1972. All 3 dedicatees died between beginning the creation of Method Music and this release date, and I felt to honour each of them.

I realised in the mid-80s that architectural and structural interest in a slow and expansive piece of music is difficult to sustain whilst either improvising or composing, and so my using Harmonic Mathematics to sculpt the structures ensured that a thorough engagement with the conscious mind was achieved, simultaneously with a spacious breath of expressive expansion.

I had experimented with this in earlier pieces such as “Silverstream” (1985) and “Crystal Mists In Silver Air” (1991-4) (both available at http://www.meditationalmusic.net)- there is a murmuration with these pieces that can take place – engaging the mind’s language, albeit very gently, as also the simultaneous feeling of being transported out into satisfyingly remote spaces of relaxation.

Imaginary Galaxies each have a very large number of tracks (the best part of 100) and Pete Townshend has said he would love to hear one performed by an orchestra. Nos. 2 & 3 both have almost all orchestral instruments, (no.1 has more synthesised “pad” sounds as well) they are truly Cosmic Orchestral Meditations. Creating a world of impressions, deep meditative journeys across the far cosmos. Orchestral performances and recordings would be both possible and very exciting (in a meditative kind of excited way).

The construction of the 3 galaxies, from the rotating figures that slowly modify, was made by extensive experiments using a sequencer to trial numerous combinations of the rich DNA-like strands of counterpoint generated by the harmonic maths programs I wrote in the LISP language.

These pieces evolved whilst I was creating the Imaginary Sitters, which were for Pete and myself to see how the music portraits should sound, and be constructed. Creating “galaxies” of 10 segments of 2 minutes, rather than the Sitters’ 10 segments of 30 seconds each, was attractive to me, as I was grappling during that period with this composing of giant meditative spacey structures, and Pete’s enthusiasm for the galaxy pieces catapulted us into including them as part of the album, although they are really an offshoot, not a direct part, of the Lifehouse-Method project.

Method Music – the double album – is released (tomorrow), 31st January 2012 by Navona Records, available on Amazon and iTunes

UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Method-Music-Lawrence-Ball/dp/B006CAXQ3U/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1325286870&sr=1-1

USA: http://www.amazon.com/Method-Music-Lawrence-Ball/dp/B006CAXQ3U/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1325286964&sr=1-1

Over the next few years I made trips to Nottingham and worked with Dave developing ideas and programs and teaching him what I’d discovered about what I now call Harmonic Mathematics, and in turn he came up with imaginative ideas – such as using 3D instead of 2 dimensions for the graphic software, and using multi-level harmonic mathematics where the same processes occurred with points, and also with clusters of points – themselves moving in harmonic ways.

Between 2001 and 2004 Dave created, with input from myself, a wonderful program for Mac OS9 which we call Visual Harmony. Its a very sophisticated piece of 3D graphic software that produces beautiful and magical dynamic sculptures. Abstract geometrical coloured and colour-transforming images. It doesn’t yet (as of 31/12/11) run on Mac OSX. We used it at my Planet Tree Music Festivals in 2000 and 2001 for about 5 concerts altogether, and the graphics drew very favourable reviews.

Years later I invited Dave to join in as software engineer and systems designer for Pete Townshend’s Lifehouse-Method. Dave worked on the musical generation of the portraiture with me, to my design, but with many insightful suggestions about ways to calculate and decide the simple yet very mindful process. Its a cascade of decisions that create each piece on the basis of the data input by the sitter.

It has been a long wait of over 20 years to develop the applications of “Harmonic Mathematics”.  Now that Pete Townshend has given the melodic HM a huge leash of life with the Lifehouse-Method, we are hoping that the visual and healing tone applications will also be given such leashes of life.

Method Music – the double album – is released on January 31st 2012 by Navona Records, available on Amazon and iTunes

USA: http://www.amazon.com/Method-Music-Lawrence-Ball/dp/B006CAXQ3U/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1325286964&sr=1-1

UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Method-Music-Lawrence-Ball/dp/B006CAXQ3U/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1325286870&sr=1-1

Dave Snowdon CV

Dave Snowdon was formerly a research scientist at Xerox Research Centre Europe in Grenoble, France where he created innovative systems for information sharing and worked with peer to peer and context-driven mobile systems. He is now working at Snowtiger Design. He worked on writing the software and web user interface for Pete Townshend’s Lifehouse Method.

He obtained his PhD from Manchester University, UK after work on a novel object-oriented multi-user collaborative virtual environment (CVE) called AVIARY. Between 1994 and 1998 he worked at the Communications Research Group at Nottingham University during which time he worked on new systems to support CVEs, collaborative information visualisationa and public VR artistic experiences which were demonstrated publicly at the Nottingham Now Ninety6 and NOW Ninety7 arts festivals. He has also co-chaired three international conferences on Collaborative Virtual Environments CVE’96 (Nottingham, UK), CVE’98 (Manchester, UK) and ACM CVE2000 (San Francisco, USA).

Method Music both responds to and digs very deeply indeed into this world. The rapidly flickering and simultaneously transforming melodic patterns – loops – extend the usual playable musical palate of possibilities into faster, more intricate realms, whilst still retaining an aesthetic control that makes for true musicality in that new, more nimble soundworld. Often elaborating on more playable music, extending it virtuosically. In the tradition of Terry Riley’s music, this is cyber-virtuosic minimalism or post-minimalism. To use machines to do what they do better than human performing.

It felt like Pete wanted to extend this work on his “paradiddles” (using Steve Reich’s word) in the Who songs for the LIfehouse-Method portraiture project. Hearing what I had accomplished with computer-generated music in my pieces like “Molecular” and “Snowflakes” (2000), “Number Rays” (1984), and “Bubbles” (1985), (free to listen to at http://www.lawrenceball.org) it seemed he felt that I could help him, despite my being a composer who had always worked thus far almost completely out of the public eye. He did his best to put me in a position where I felt comfortable attempting all of what he wished me to achieve, which in itself was quite a feat.

Having created much music that I was fabulously pleased with using “harmonic mathematics” which I developed in the 80s, (Number Rays – 1984, Silverstream and Bubbles – 1985, and about 70 of my 170 scores) it seemed the perfect technique with which to hew millions of pieces of distinct music, which was the requirement of Pete’s Lifehouse-Method portraiture.

The Meher Baba Piece, on the Method Music album, was the base for the Who song “Fragments”. When the Who played Fragments in the Hollywood Bowl in 2007, the crowd started cheering at the opening paradiddle, thinking it was Baba O’Riley. The adaptation, Fragments, of the tribute piece, the Meher Baba Piece had become confused with the target of the tribute, Baba O’Riley.

Method Music – the double album – is released on January 31st 2012 by Navona Records, available on Amazon and iTunes

USA: http://www.amazon.com/Method-Music-Lawrence-Ball/dp/B006CAXQ3U/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1325286964&sr=1-1

UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Method-Music-Lawrence-Ball/dp/B006CAXQ3U/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1325286870&sr=1-1

We used Vienna Symphony Orchestra samples for the orchestral instruments, and for the drums Peter Huntington recorded for us several hits for each drum sound on his kit. All this took quite some time and was complicated by the challenge of adapting music originally created for different sounding instruments. For instance the double bass sound on Galaxy 2 was almost impossible to get sounding the same with the Vienna sample.

Then Pete felt that the percussion, because it was triggered by midi patterns, was too mechanical sounding, and he suggested vamping the situation somehow. My solution was to put all the percussion sounds through a filter bank, so as to colour each “hit” with a note, thereby giving all the percussion a melodic quality as well as the usual percussive drive. This gives the music a unique percussion sound and bonds the percussion to the music very strongly. It also makes the percussion “melodies” fit the harmonic maths developments that occur in all the other instruments’ parts.

Some years before, Pete had invented what he calls the “myriad sound system” where each instrument has a separate loudspeaker to be recorded through. It occurred to him, and me also, that when one has synthesised or sampled voices recorded together, they can fold flat against each other in a way that blurs or destroys their distinct and individual character. Pete was concerned that this needed to be avoided. With this system, which Pete recreated for the album by purchasing 36 such speakers, Myles and I were able to record the album through this system (looking a little like a mini-orchestra of ETs), including phasing by swinging microphones in front of the speakers.

Then the music sounded boxy (as if heard in a box) – the frequencies sounding restricted. To solve this Pete had the stage/platform removed from the main studio at Oceanic, which took a whole morning of heavy lifting by a team of guys helping out. At this stage Pete felt that we were in the frame for sound quality. In some ways this is one of the most ambitious recordings ever made, for which I am deeply grateful to Pete. Ultimately I felt he was applying the same high standard of extraordinary sound quality to these recordings as he does for his other work, solo and with the Who.

Method Music – the double album – is released on January 31st 2012 by Navona Records, available on Amazon and iTunes

UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Method-Music-Lawrence-Ball/dp/B006CAXQ3U/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1325286870&sr=1-1

USA: http://www.amazon.com/Method-Music-Lawrence-Ball/dp/B006CAXQ3U/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1325286964&sr=1-1

I had been very aware of the Who, as well as the Pink Floyd and the Soft Machine, since my youth, and felt and feel that the quality of artistic work in rock and pop often at least matched the aliveness in contemporary classical music. Baba O’Riley by the Who had remained for me a fantastic fusion of contrasting influences, particularly as Terry Riley has become a cherished friend, and Pete and I have worked together.

Pete is SO enthusiastic. He said early on that as I lived a 45 minutes drive from his home and his studio – perhaps we might have a mobile studio truck parked in the road outside my house with a live link to his studio at Twickenham. (This was a gloriously rash lighthearted gesture, even if ultimately impossible, as it made me realise how intent he was about taking my work seriously).

Pete is highly imaginative and intelligent – though those words don’t really do him justice, there were many discussion sessions, with myself, and sometimes with my programmer and friend Dave Snowdon who implemented the Lifehouse-Method software and set it up, extremely robustly, on a web server. These discussions often went some way over their allotted time (in a good way). We talked about the nature of what a musical portrait could or should be. He was very committed to the idea that a portrait is authentic, and that the “artist is right”.

Pete is passionately engaged with the internet and its possibilities, much moreso than Roger Daltrey.

There remains the next and/or final chapter of the Lifehouse-Method legend, that if it comes together I’m sure is likely to use the internet and live performance together in the creative way only Pete’s vision and humour could.

Method Music – the double album – is released on January 31st 2012 by Navona Records, available on Amazon and iTunes

UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Method-Music-Lawrence-Ball/dp/B006CAXQ3U/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1325286870&sr=1-1

USA: http://www.amazon.com/Method-Music-Lawrence-Ball/dp/B006CAXQ3U/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1325286964&sr=1-1

Applying it to visual motion or colour changes can create beautiful, exhilarating sequences of abstract visual action.
Applying it to timbre creates a series of deeply relaxing tonal changes – an orchestral richness of harmonics within a single tone.

Application to melody is also enormously exciting. One such application of melodic Harmonic Mathematics was a system of pieces called “Number Rays”.
These emerged in the spring of 1984, and were for me a colossal breakthrough in understanding how to create new dimensions of control and intricacies of change in music.
I also applied these techniques to creating many of my scores, including all of my 1st Symphony, and 3/4 of my 2nd, spanning the next 20 years and more.

The first melodic breakthrough was in rhythmic phase.
The composer Steve Reich created a series of pieces called Pianophase; Violinphase &c.
where performers playing an identically repeating figure are instructed that one overtakes the other, extremely gradually.
This is difficult to do with human performers, but with computer programming – although it is harder to program than one realises -
one can not only do it beautifully – but can extend the number of melodic streams going in and out of phase from 2 up to as many as one wishes (I have used up to 16).
The effect of 16 automated musicians playing this gradual phase change music is wondrous in the extreme, it challenges the mind to hear so so many beautiful details.

The next breakthrough I made was to alter the melodic loop as the streams were going on their magical “in and out of phase” journeys.
This gives an added interest to the musical texture, as now the rhythms AND the melodic patterns are both shifting and transforming magically.

In the Method Music album, I use spliced fragments of these sequences, some like these, others a more advanced design, but that gives a basic vivid idea.

To go back to the basic principle, when an array of points (points could be notes in a melody, or the position of a downbeat, or objects on a screen) change their position in a way that the speeds of change are harmonic
one at speed 1, the next at speed 2,then 3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 &c, up to possibly 100s
then the changes behave like the natural harmonics of a tone, and they have all the beauty of the harmonics of a tone, and in some ways even more.
The late computer filmmaker John Whitney discovered the very basics of harmonic maths, which he calls “differential dynamics”, but he applies it only to actual motion, not to more sophisticated, or algebraic or abstract changes.

On youtube there are pendulum systems, (look up harmonics + pendulum), which are “differential dynamics” unplugged,
where one can see the most elementary form of this beauty of transformation that harmonic motion produces.
Even at this level one can see almost unbelievably satisfying changes that are as good as magic, if not actually, magical.

In the Method Music album, these mathematically magical sequences of melody and rhythms are edited with deliberation.
The intricate patterns of melodically and rhythmically evolving loops are loaded into and edited in a sequencer.
My program creates giant marathon slabs of this contrapuntal chocolate, which can be broken off into usable chunks.
I used such pieces of these richly woven mega-strands, laid them down and edited them, to maximise their “speaking”.

In the Lifehouse-Method portraiture there are streams of combinable sounds auto-generated,
but everything is done without human intervention, it is a sealed system,
an automatic generation is the only option for online portraiture.

Method Music – the double album – is released on January 31st 2012 by Navona Records, available on Amazon and iTunes
UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Method-Music-Lawrence-Ball/dp/B006CAXQ3U/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1325286870&sr=1-1
USA: http://www.amazon.com/Method-Music-Lawrence-Ball/dp/B006CAXQ3U/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1325286964&sr=1-1

After some 5 years of this dialogue, Pete approached me about helping him with the Lifehouse-Method, a form of musical portraiture that he’d been carrying a vision of…….. for around 30 years.
We embarked on this work on several fronts:
1) I began to create pieces as sketches for Pete and myself to get a very clear idea of what the Method portraiture should look and sound like. For instance, Pete wanted 2, or more or a huge number of portraits to be playable simultaneously.
2) I began to work with my friend and highly accomplished programmer Dave Snowdon to see how we might best set up a system to host and create the musical portraits.
3) Eventually, the sketches became pieces that Pete and I both really liked and he decided they should be recorded in the highest quality and released in their own right, also himself using the music for (two of hopefully many) Who songs. These 11 “Imaginary Sitters” along with 3 other pieces I created during this period that are longer, more expansive and meditational, called “Imaginary Galaxies”, became an album “Method Music”.

One of the pieces I created along with the Method Music album’s pieces, which became known as the “Meher Baba Piece”, began life in an unusual way.
On one occasion Pete was arriving one hour later than scheduled at my home, due to a problem with a driver’s booking.
At this point I had been toying for some time with making a piece based on the flickering electronic sounding loop at the beginning of Pete’s song for the Who “Baba O’Riley”.
This was to double as a Method Music piece as well as a tribute piece to Baba O’Riley.
During the extra hour I managed to lay down a substantial amount of the entire piece, and, not being able to resist playing it to Pete, it then received a great welcome (“Its beautiful”, he said).
His enthusiasm continued with the encouragement to complete the piece,
and it then became the base for a song he wrote for the Who, Fragments, (and a second track “Fragments of Fragments) which can now be found on the Who album “Endless Wire” released in 2007.

Method Music – the double album – is released on January 31st 2012 by Navona Records, available on Amazon and iTunes.
UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Method-Music-Lawrence-Ball/dp/B006CAXQ3U/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1325286870&sr=1-1
USA: http://www.amazon.com/Method-Music-Lawrence-Ball/dp/B006CAXQ3U/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1325286964&sr=1-1

The first time I became aware of it (the presence) was in playing the piano at the home of a friend. It was as if there was (perhaps there was) a separate yet not separate being standing over and behind me, gently helping me hold steady a conduit of energy flowing through my playing.

It was uncanny because one normally experiences the other as an entity with energies that are not the same as one’s own, however close they may be, and this being was as good as a heavenly extension of my identity.

This experience seeded an outpouring of music since that time (1976 – 34 years ago this July). The house was in Woodberry Grove in Manor House, North London. My dear friend living there who inspired the playing is Ron Wildego, with whom I have been in touch ever since. He now lives in Feuilla, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, in the South of France.

At that moment in my life I understood without any reservation how the energy in reflective music is primary, and the music ornaments the energy – not the other way around. Sometimes I have sat at the keyboard for hours, playing/recording.

Sometimes the energy around me can go very dark, very heavy. I feel it as an echo in my tissues and muscles, and sometimes it feels like a discomfort or a pain, although I can see that’s an illusion, because it clears, sometimes in a moment.

Sometimes it doesn’t so much clear as suddenly becomes so enfolded by a different energy, finer, higher, sharper, lighter, that although its still there, it has no disturbing effect on me. These experiences of large energy changes whilst playing were revelations, not only musically but also in a way spiritually.

On the surface level the improvisations have evolved in form, and after I started playing for my wonderful friend Andrew Jamieson (an orchestra impressario and also classical music afficionado and big collector) I found a way to create spontaneous sonata forms in several movements as a single improvisation.

Andrew has also continued, like Ron to be an incredibly consistent friend. To imitate classical form for me is not enough, there MUST also be a sense of space in the music, to allow everyone (and me!) to find themselves reflected back to them in the way that angel (or higher me?) helped me see the way to.

In recent years, through the help of 2 more dear friends sarod player Lisa Sangita Moskow in San Francisco and South Indian raga tradition singer Manickam Yogeswaran (from Sri Lanka) who I meet in London, I have learned many North and South Indian raga scales and have played in duo with both these wonderful musicians in concerts over several years.

My palette has many influences and tonal colours but the still centre mirror being presence transmutational experience is still the most essential to me.

Sitting at the piano, expecting waterfalls of melodic cascades, being alert for new territory, its very like this process, blogging, in fact I have a feeling one of my next blogs will feature a piano improvisation on camera, fresh from the creating.

Jean received us with great warmth, and could see that James and I were rooting for his unique and very beautiful approach to music. He lived on the periphery of a French new music scene dominated by Boulez and the modernists. This was largely before IRCAM opened its doors to a lot of dance music guys.

He taught composition and conducting, but particularly after a car accident concussion, he had two years where his musical vision changed gear, and rendered some of his friends thinking he’d lost it. But this is where his work took off quite magically, paralleling by a very different route the American minimalists, and introducing a stillness and sense of the eternal which equals anyone that I’ve heard. I became interested in the 90′s in his music and started to include it in concerts I was involved with.

The big realisation dawned on me after I invited James D’Angelo to perform the first 45 minutes of the 10th Organ Sonata (that’s roughly half of it) in London. Wow! I could feel the air ringing like a bell at the end. I had to help him.

Jean has written dozens of symphonies (I think round 70) and music for most combinations in classical repertoire. I recently created a (synthesizer simulation) recording of the first 74 minutes of Symphony 43, a glorious thing to experience, which I would love to see released. Stephen Bennett and James D’Angelo have also recorded one of the clarinet/piano sonatas.

Jean wrote almost 500 hours of music – probably more than any composer of all time.

You can read James D’Angelo’s article on Jean at http://www.planettree.org/ptmhome.html   under commentary