ERROLLYN WALLEN CBE is a multi award-winning Belize-born British composer named as one of the world’s top twenty most performed living classical composers. Her prolific output includes over twenty operas and a large catalogue of orchestral, chamber and vocal works, which are performed and broadcast throughout the world. She has composed for the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games 2012, for the Queen’s Golden and Diamond Jubilees, a specially commissioned song for COP 26, a re-imagining of Jerusalem for the Last Night of the Proms 2020. BBC Radio 3 featured her music for Composer of the Week, and she has made several radio documentaries. Errollyn collaborated with artist Sonia Boyce on her installation, Feeling Her Way, for the British Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale, which won the Golden Lion prize. Her acclaimed opera, Dido’s Ghost was premiered at the Barbican in 2021 and received its US première in San Francisco in November 2023. She is currently working on a new opera which will premiere at Aldeburgh in 2026. Recent premieres include a Wigmore Hall debut performance of songs from The Errollyn Wallen Songbook, a violin concerto for Philippe Quint, Dances for Orchestra for Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Swedish Chamber Orchestra and Irish Chamber Orchestra, Night Thoughts, a song cycle for Dame Sarah Connolly and pianist Joseph Middleton and PARADE commissioned by Academy of St Martin in the Fields which toured Germany and Austria in January 2025.
As well as the release of her violin concerto on the PENTATONE label, a recording of her orchestral works recorded at Abbey Road Studios, will be released in March on the Resonus label.
Errollyn Wallen’s book, Becoming a Composer published by Faber in 2023, has been translated into Spanish. The paperback will be published this year.
Errollyn Wallen’s recordings have travelled 7.84 million kilometers in space, completing 186 orbits around the Earth on NASA’s STS-115 mission.
In August 2024 Errollyn Wallen was appointed Master of the King’s Music.
Errollyn Wallen’s residency is generously supported by The Kulas Foundation.