On August 24, 2024, King Charles the III in Great Britain made a ground breaking appointment as his Master of the King’s Music - the first Black woman ever to fill the position: Errollyn Wallen, CBE.
And not only that. She’s the first woman to win at the Ivors, the coveted Ivor Novello for classical music; she’s the first Black woman to get a performance at the Proms; she’s even been performed in space. And all that, for a child who was effectively abandoned by her parents and sent off to boarding school when she was six.
Born in Belize in 1958, her parents relocated with her to England when she was two. But when she was six, by now the eldest of four, they decided to move again – to New York – and enrolled her in boarding school, leaving all the children in England in the care of an aunt and uncle. She kept expecting them to return home but they never did.
The school was an all-girls school in Sussex and she stuck out like a sore thumb. She wanted to be a ballerina but was told that there were no Black ballerinas. Later, of course, she was told that there were no Black composers either. One of the first music directors she approached – white, male, important – actually said to her “Show me your scores and we can have a good laugh.”
But Uncle Arthur turned out to be a saviour. It was he who suggested she might be a composer, on top of her obvious talent as a pianist and her love for English hymn. She studied her way up to a masters at Kings College Cambridge, became a session musician, started to compose and then in 1994, a commission arrived from the BBC for their Young musician’s competition and she was off. That’s the one that debuted at the proms.
I love her Dances for orchestra, and the way she integrates contemporary and traditional and folk music styles. Her writing for orchestra is wonderful. She’s also one of the few composers to live in a lighthouse! in the Orkney islands.
She says: “There is endless treasure if we can but dare to walk the path that opens up for each of us. If I want to go somewhere, nothing’s ever really stopped me. I just go ahead and do it.”
Errollyn Wallen (1958 – )
MUSIC: Dances for Orchestra – Dances 1 & 2
BBC Concert Orchestra / John Andrews
Presented by Anna Clyne
Written and produced by Charlotte Wilson for WMHT
