Errollyn Wallen has become the first Black woman to be appointed Master of the King’s Music, by King Charles. The Belize-born composer, pianist and singer-songwriter, who has composed pieces for the BBC Proms, the 2012 Paralympic Games, and the jubilees of Queen Elizabeth II, succeeds Dame Judith Weir, who was appointed by the late Queen and was the first woman to hold the 10-year post.
Masters of the king or queen’s music are called upon to compose pieces for special royal occasions, such as royals weddings, jubilees and coronations. The title is awarded to musicians who have added to the musical life of the nation. Wallen said: “I am thrilled to accept this royal appointment … I look forward to championing music and music-making for all.”
Wallen’s work is among the most performed among living composers. It includes 22 operas, and many orchestral, chamber and vocal compositions. In 1998, she became the first Black woman to have work in the BBC Proms, and was the first woman to receive an Ivor Novello award for Classical Music.
“The calling to be a musician has been stronger than any other consideration,” she told Lauren Laverne, on a recent episode of Desert Island Discs. “If along the way I’ve helped to dispel the myth that a composer is only white and male, that can only be a good thing.”
Wallen was born in Belize in 1958 and moved to the UK with her parents when she was two. When her parents later moved to New York, she was brought up by her aunt and uncle in north London. She told Laverne that she was musical from a young age, singing in her cot as a baby and relishing music lessons at her primary school. As a child she told her uncle that she had “a headful of sounds”. He suggested she might be a composer.
Her father performed as a singer in Northern clubs, and brought a piano home that, when she was five, she found a natural talent for. “I would go to bed as a child dreaming of the piano and found it very hard to be separated from it,” she said.
She went on to study music at Goldsmiths College, University of London, then a masters in composition at King’s College, Cambridge. Piano continued to play a central role in her work. She has said that she starts her compositions by improvising on the instrument. “I feel I’m an explorer,” Wallen said.
To make money after graduation, Wallen played in care homes, as part of an alternative comedy act, and as a session musician for heavy metal, jazz and reggae bands, even appearing on Top of the Pops.
She said earlier this year: “I wanted to be a composer but had absolutely no idea how to break in.” The field was dominated by white men. In 1987, along with other female composers, musicians and administrators she founded Women in Music, an organisation to tackle the imbalance. Wallen began to forge her own path, creating the group Ensemble X, which performed some of her repertoire work for the first time in 1990. It had the motto: “We don’t break down barriers in music … we don’t see any.”
As the 1990s progressed, Wallen established herself as a respected classical composer, leading to her Proms debut in 1998 with Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra, which drew on jazz and dance rhythms from Africa and Latin America. In 2020, she reworked Jerusalem for the Last Night of the Proms, to reflect the Commonwealth’s connection to the song, dedicating it to the Windrush generation. She told Laverne that she was shocked to receive “abusive” messages in the aftermath: “I hadn’t realised there was a problem, that there’s certain sacred things that no Black person must touch.”
Her 2009 opera YES was inspired by Bonnie Greer confronting the leader of a right-wing party on BBC’s Question Time, while Principia and Spirit in Motion were composed for the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Paralympic Games, inspired by the athletes.
Wallen was awarded an MBE in 2007, and a CBE in 2020. She now lives and composes in a Scottish lighthouse.