Errollyn Wallen

Errollyn Wallen CBE is an award-winning composer and lyricist, whose works are amongst the most regularly performed around the world of any living composer. An extensive catalogue includes more than 20 operas, as well as symphonies, ballets, chamber and vocal music.

Throughout her career, commissions have been received from institutions such as the Royal Opera House, The Royal Ballet, Opera North, Welsh National Opera, Streetwise Opera, Barbican, Edinburgh International Festival, BBC Proms, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Luxembourg Philharmonic and the Kansas City Symphony.

Notable commissions have included two works for the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Paralympic Games – PRINCIPIA, for massed choirs and orchestra, and Spirit in Motion, for soprano and orchestra – which were broadcast to a billion people around the world; a song commissioned for COP26; and a re-imagining of Jerusalem for the 2020 Last Night of the Proms.

Other important works include Diamond Greenwich, written for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee; One Night, BBC drama series (winner of the 2013 FIPA d’Or for Best Music for a Television Series); her opera Dido’s Ghost which premiered at the Barbican in 2021, and which received its US premiere in San Francisco in 2023; and her hit opera for children, Cautionary Tales, commissioned by Opera North.

Errollyn Wallen has produced albums as singer/pianist (ERROLLYN and Meet Me at Harold Moores), and The Errollyn Wallen Songbook is published by Edition Peters. As well as the critically acclaimed portrait CD, The Girl in My Alphabet, her music appears on numerous compilations including her arrangement of her song Daedalus on The Brodsky Quartet’s Moodswings, featuring a range of artists including Björk, Sting and Elvis Costello. She has performed her own music all over the world, including at the Other Minds Festival in 2015 alongside artists such as Laurie Anderson and Meredith Monk.

Errollyn Wallen has won numerous awards, including the British Composer’s Award, and in 2013 she was the recipient of the Ivor Novello Award for Classical Music, the first woman to receive this honour. She 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. She was elected Honorary Fellow of Mansfield College, Oxford 'in recognition of her distinguished contribution to scholarship in the field of British contemporary music and her exceptional achievements as a composer.'

In 2024, she was appointed as Master of the King’s Music, the first appointment to this role of his reign.