Errollyn Wallen is a multi-award-winning Belize-born British composer and performer. Her prolific output includes twenty-two operas and a large catalogue of orchestral, chamber and vocal works which are performed and broadcast throughout the world. She was the first black woman to have a work featured in the Proms and the first woman to receive an Ivor Novello award for Classical Music for her body of work. Errollyn composed for the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games 2012, for the Queen’s Golden and Diamond Jubilees, a specially commissioned song for the climate change conference, COP 26, 2021, and a re-imagining of Jerusalem for BBC’s Last Night of the Proms 2020. She is one of the top 20 most performed living composers of classical music in the world.
New works for 2023 include a violin concerto, Dances for Orchestra for Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and song cycle, JOY, for Erin Wagner. Her 40-part work for unaccompanied voices was released in February by National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and her piano concerto is released in March on the Resonus label. Resonus will be recording several of her orchestral works later in 2024. In October Errollyn will give her Wigmore Hall debut performing the songs from The Errollyn Wallen Songbook. Her Song Cycle, Night Thoughts, for Mezzo-Soprano and Piano will also be premiered in October by Dame Sarah Connolly and Joseph Middleton. Errollyn’s book, becoming a Composer will be published by Faber this year.
Errollyn was awarded an MBE in 2007 in the Queen’s Birthday Honours and a CBE in 2020 in the New Year Honours, for services to music.