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Portrait of Errollyn Wallen

Music

Errollyn Wallen

born 1958 · Belizean-British

Contemporary British — opera, song and crossover

Errollyn Wallen is a Belize-born British composer, singer and pianist who in August 2024 became Master of the King's Music, the first appointment to the post by King Charles III and the first Black person to hold it. She has written more than twenty operas as well as orchestral works, songs and film scores, and works across the line between classical and popular music, often performing her own songs at the piano.

How to spot them

  • ▸She sings and plays her own music, and her catalogue runs from operas and concertos to pop songs — she has said she does not hear a border between the two
  • ▸She founded and leads her own group, Ensemble X, whose motto is that she does not care whether music is classical or pop, only that it is true
  • ▸Questions circle a run of firsts: the first Black woman to have a work played at the BBC Proms, in 1998, and the first Black Master of the King's Music, in 2024
  • ▸She composed for the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Paralympic Games, and reworked a famous Parry hymn for the Last Night of the Proms in 2020

Key works — listen

A 2020 reworking of Parry's setting of Blake for the Last Night of the Proms, scored for a socially distanced orchestra (2020)

Her re-imagining of Jerusalem, commissioned for the Last Night of the BBC Proms during the pandemic

An orchestral work of 2017 marking the bicentenary of the death of the campaigner who carried the abolition bill through Parliament (2017)

Mighty River, written for the bicentenary of the abolitionist William Wilberforce's death and quoting Amazing Grace and spirituals

A 2021 opera that wraps around Purcell's Carthaginian tragedy, taking up the story after the queen's death (2021)

Dido's Ghost, a sequel to and frame for Dido and Aeneas, premiered at the Barbican

The music she wrote for the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Paralympic Games, performed in the Olympic Stadium (2012)

Spirit in Motion, taking its title from the Paralympic motto

A recent opera of hers named for a seasonal wonder, written around the time she took up the royal post

A Christmas Miracle

A song cycle written for the mezzo-soprano Dame Sarah Connolly, named for what runs through a sleepless mind

Night Thoughts

A suite of orchestral dances taken up by the Scottish, Swedish and Irish chamber orchestras

Dances for Orchestra

Quick-fire facts

  • •She was born in Belize City on 10 April 1958 and moved to London as a small child
  • •She trained first as a dancer, at the Dance Theatre of Harlem in New York, before turning to composition
  • •She studied at Goldsmiths, King's College London and King's College, Cambridge
  • •In 1998 she became the first Black woman to have a work performed at the BBC Proms
  • •She founded Ensemble X, her own performing group, in 1990
  • •She composed for the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Paralympic Games and for COP26 in Glasgow
  • •She was appointed MBE in 2007 and CBE in 2020
  • •She wrote works for both the Golden and the Diamond Jubilees of Queen Elizabeth II
  • •King Charles III appointed her Master of the King's Music in August 2024, in succession to Dame Judith Weir — the first appointment to the post of his reign
  • •Her memoir Becoming a Composer was published in 2023, and she has presented documentaries for BBC Radio 3

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Sources