Errollyn Wallen is a Belize-born British composer whose output includes twenty operas and two large-scale works for the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games for London 2012 broadcast to a billion people around the world. Her latest large-scale work, a re-imagining of Parry’s Jerusalem, titled Jerusalem — our clouded hills for Soprano and Orchestra, was performed at this year’s Last Night of the Proms and broadcast around the world from Royal Albert Hall. This Frame Is Part of the Painting for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, is a BBC Proms commission for 2019 and was performed by BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conducted by Elim Chan, to a sold-out Royal Albert Hall. Her new chamber opera The Powder Monkey recently finished a tour including a performance at the Royal National Maritime Museum and she is working on an opera to include performers of all abilities which is commissioned by Graeae Theatre Company. Her acclaimed Concerto Grosso was released on the NMC label in January 2020, performed by Chineke! who also premiered the chamber work Nnenna, at the Cambridge Music Festival in 2018, and gave its London premiere at Wigmore Hall in 2019. The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge has recorded her music for a forthcoming release and performed Pace on their recent Australian tour. Her opera The Silent Twins (libretto by April De Angelis) will receive its U.S. premiere in New York in 2022.

Her arrangement of Johnetta Bryant’s song, I’m a Young Black Man (composed in response to George Floyd’s murder) for Clean Bandit and Friends has received 76,000 views to date on YouTube. It features Grace Chatto, Sheku and Braimah Kanneh-Mason, Nicola and Stephanie Benedetti.

Other works in progress include a piano concerto (commissioned by Royal Birmingham Conservatoire) and a new opera, Dido’s Ghost, commissioned by Dunedin Consort and the Barbican. Errollyn Wallen’s albums include* Errollyn, *The Girl in My Alphabet and Meet Me at Harold Moores. In 2006, astronaut Steve MacLean brought Wallen’s music aboard NASA’s STS-115 mission — her albums travelled 7.84 million kilometers in space, completing 186 orbits around the Earth. Her latest orchestral album, with Orchestra X, Photography, was voted into the Top Ten Classical Albums by National Public Radio. An EP of her choral works performed by King’s College Choir (the last recording conducted by Sir Stephen Cleobury) will be released by King’s College Recordings this Christmas.

Errollyn was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 2007 and was upgraded to a Commander (CBE) in the 2020 New Year Honours List. In 2015 she became an Honorary Fellow of Mansfield College, Oxford and in 2019 an Honorary Fellow of Goldsmiths, London. She has received an Ivor Novello Award for Classical Music, a British Composer Award and a FIPA D’Or for Best Music for a Television Series. These honors come with further garnishes: an Honorary Doctorate from York St. John’s University, one of BBC’s 100 Women of 2018 and one of London University’s 150 Leading Women.

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