Becoming a Composer

'I am a composer. A composer of classical music. Quite honestly I am not quite sure how that happened to a girl born in Belize and brought up in Tottenham. .It is clear that composing found me. It crept up on me and wouldn't let me out of its grasp.'
Now a leading international composer and a singer-songwriter, Errollyn Warren is as much at home in jazz and pop as in the classical world. Part memoir, How to be a composer: A Life in Music offers an intriguing glimpse into the mind and motivation of a composer and covers aspects of Wallen's sometimes troubled childhood, and her experiences of growing up as a black composer in the UK. It includes a collection of observations, diaries following the progress of new works, and essays. Aimed at a wide audience the book seeks to shed light on the way a composer sees and hears the world.

Errollyn Wallen is a Belize-born British composer whose output includes eighteen operas and a large scale work for the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games in London 2012, broadcast to a billion people around the world. Her re-imagining of Parry's Jerusalem for soprano and orchestra was performed at the 2019 Last Night of the Proms and broadcast live around the world from Royal Albert Hall. Her acclaimed Concerto Grosso was released on the NMC label in January 2020, performed by Chineke! Her opera The Silent Twins (libretto by April De Angelis) will receive its US première in New York in 2022.
Errollyn's 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 over 90,000 views on YouTube. It features Grace Chatto, Sheku and Braimah Kanneh-Mason, and Nicola and Stephanie Benedetti.
Errollyn was awarded the MBE in 2007 and was made a CBE in 2020. 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