Latest news with #MasteroftheKing'sMusic
Kuwait Times
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Kuwait Times
King's musical sage Errollyn Wallen blazes new path
Told she would never belong in the world of classical music, Errollyn Wallen has risen to become the composer to King Charles III and the first person of color in the historic role. The 67-year-old became the Master of the King's Music last year, a 400-year-old post and one of the classical world's top honors that involves composing works for landmark events and advising the king on musical matters for royal occasions. 'He's very musical, which everybody's really thrilled about,' Wallen told AFP. 'He likes listening to music and he is curious about it - he has broad tastes, which is really wonderful,' added Wallen, who premiered her 'funky' new composition 'Elements' at the first night of the renowned Proms music festival in London on Friday. Charles showed a lighter side in March when he shared his favorite songs from around the Commonwealth in an Apple podcast, revealing a surprising appreciation of disco, reggae and Afrobeats and including hits from such artists as Kylie Minogue and Diana Ross. In a sign of his musical conviction, Charles sought advice from Wallen - 'but in the end the king chose his own' songs, she said. 'It was important for him to choose tracks that brought back personal memories to him and that's the power of music,' said the pianist, violinist and singer. 'Think of the people he's met, all the great musicians. It's incredible,' added the self-confessed cake fanatic. Teacher inspiration Wallen was born in the former British colony of Belize in 1958, and soon showed signs of a precocious talent. 'My parents said that as a baby, I didn't cry, but I was always singing.' She moved to London aged two and her mother and father then relocated to New York, leaving her and her siblings, one of whom is the jazz trumpeter Byron Wallen, in the care of her aunt and uncle. 'I was always making up songs for any boring chore,' she recalled. Wallen credits a junior school teacher for setting her on her current path. 'I was very lucky that at school, all of us nine-year-olds were taught to read and write music, but also introduced to orchestral music.' However, she received little encouragement to pursue a career as a composer. 'I love my family, but I think there was the idea that you wouldn't step out of the ordinary,' she explained. Another early memory is of a non-music teacher telling her 'you know, little girl, classical music isn't for you'. 'These subtle messages going in that I might be good at music, but I wouldn't belong to that world. 'But I was so curious and passionate about music... I think the negative messages didn't go in deeply.' 'So shocked' Indeed, taking the road less travelled only strengthened her conviction and 'led me into other paths of music making which has stood me in great stead'. 'I was a keyboard player and I played music in the community and care homes - it opened my eyes to how music can touch people.' It was at boarding school that the classical bug really took hold, and it was later nurtured at Goldsmiths', King's College London and King's College, Cambridge. Wallen also appeared as a backing artist for the 1990s girl group 'Eternal' and performed as a tap dancer, having trained as a dancer in London and New York. She had her own recording studio, and her work includes 22 operas and a range of orchestral, chamber and vocal compositions. Her arrangement of Hubert Parry's 'Jerusalem' was performed at the Last Night of the Proms in 2020, and she also composed a piece for the Paralympics Opening Ceremony in 2012. But she still admitted to being 'so shocked' when the palace called last July, generating headlines about her being the first black woman to assume the role. 'I had to remind the palace, I'm the first black person, full stop. There's never been a person of color in this role, since 1626.' Charles I created the role to take charge of his personal band, but today it mainly entails advising and composing. 'I wrote something for the Commonwealth Day service at Westminster Abbey earlier in the year... and I did say to the palace my main objective is to be a kind of music ambassador,' she said, adding that 'children are my priority'. She aims to get for 'children some of the things that so many of us had for free' when it comes to a musical education. — AFP
Japan Today
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Japan Today
King Charles' musical sage Errollyn Wallen blazes new path
Errollyn Wallen, Master of the King's Music, was told as a child she would never belong in the world of classical music, but has risen to become the composer to King Charles III and the first person of colour in the historic role By James PHEBY Told she would never belong in the world of classical music, Errollyn Wallen has risen to become the composer to King Charles III and the first person of color in the historic role. The 67-year-old became the Master of the King's Music last year, a 400-year-old post and one of the classical world's top honours that involves composing works for landmark events and advising the king on musical matters for royal occasions. "He's very musical, which everybody's really thrilled about," Wallen told AFP. "He likes listening to music and he is curious about it -- he has broad tastes, which is really wonderful," added Wallen, who premiered her "funky" new composition "Elements" at the first night of the renowned Proms music festival in London on Friday. Charles showed a lighter side in March when he shared his favorite songs from around the Commonwealth in an Apple podcast, revealing a surprising appreciation of disco, reggae and Afrobeats and including hits from such artists as Kylie Minogue and Diana Ross. In a sign of his musical conviction, Charles sought advice from Wallen -- "but in the end the king chose his own" songs, she said. "It was important for him to choose tracks that brought back personal memories to him and that's the power of music," said the pianist, violinist and singer. "Think of the people he's met, all the great musicians. It's incredible," added the self-confessed cake fanatic. Wallen was born in the former British colony of Belize in 1958, and soon showed signs of a precocious talent. "My parents said that as a baby, I didn't cry, but I was always singing." She moved to London aged two and her mother and father then relocated to New York, leaving her and her siblings, one of whom is the jazz trumpeter Byron Wallen, in the care of her aunt and uncle. "I was always making up songs for any boring chore," she recalled. Wallen credits a junior school teacher for setting her on her current path. "I was very lucky that at school, all of us nine-year-olds were taught to read and write music, but also introduced to orchestral music." However, she received little encouragement to pursue a career as a composer. "I love my family, but I think there was the idea that you wouldn't step out of the ordinary," she explained. Another early memory is of a non-music teacher telling her "you know, little girl, classical music isn't for you". "These subtle messages going in that I might be good at music, but I wouldn't belong to that world. But I was so curious and passionate about music... I think the negative messages didn't go in deeply." Indeed, taking the road less travelled only strengthened her conviction and "led me into other paths of music making which has stood me in great stead. "I was a keyboard player and I played music in the community and care homes -- it opened my eyes to how music can touch people." It was at boarding school that the classical bug really took hold, and it was later nurtured at Goldsmiths', King's College London and King's College, Cambridge. Wallen also appeared as a backing artist for the 1990s girl group "Eternal" and performed as a tap dancer, having trained as a dancer in London and New York. She had her own recording studio, and her work includes 22 operas and a range of orchestral, chamber and vocal compositions. Her arrangement of Hubert Parry's "Jerusalem" was performed at the Last Night of the Proms in 2020, and she also composed a piece for the Paralympics Opening Ceremony in 2012. But she still admitted to being "so shocked" when the palace called last July, generating headlines about her being the first black woman to assume the role. "I had to remind the palace, I'm the first black person, full stop. There's never been a person of colour in this role, since 1626." Charles I created the role to take charge of his personal band, but today it mainly entails advising and composing. "I wrote something for the Commonwealth Day service at Westminster Abbey earlier in the year... and I did say to the palace my main objective is to be a kind of music ambassador," she said, adding that "children are my priority". She aims to get for "children some of the things that so many of us had for free" when it comes to a musical education. © 2025 AFP
The Guardian
05-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘The palace called and I heard myself saying yes': how Errollyn Wallen went from Top of the Pops to Master of the King's Music
For at least half her life, the Belize-born British composer Errollyn Wallen, appointed last year to the title of Master of the King's Music, has steered herself through a web of invisible rules. Classical composers, dead or alive, were male and white. Their Black and female counterparts were derided or ignored, excised from history. Then, slowly but definitively, things changed, and the institutions that used to give her the cold shoulder started to open up to the music they had dismissed. 'People always want to put labels on things, on people,' Wallen says, without rancour. 'Let them. You have to hang on to your own worth, see what needs doing. I was written off young, but then found a way through. There's still so much work to be done.' Wallen's musical range is ambitious, eclectic, often immediately appealing and expressive. Her huge catalogue includes works for ballet, brass bands, orchestras, choirs, solo singers, duos, pianists, chamber ensembles; her 22 operas make her almost as prolific as Verdi and nearly twice as productive as Puccini. She was the first Black woman to have music performed in the Proms, in 1998. Now among the most performed of living composers, she can't quite remember how many world premieres she has in the next few weeks (after a recount, she decides it's five), including two on the same night in different venues. She also has a new album out later this month: Errollyn Wallen Orchestral Works, played by the BBC Concert Orchestra. By any measure this is an achievement. Belying the glorious flamboyance of her appearance: pink statement glasses, a long waistcoat studded with felt flowers 'from a charity shop', black satin shirt trimmed with lace, fiery hair streaked with highlights ('thank goodness I'm going to the hairdresser this week'), Wallen's conversation is quiet, thoughtful, poised. A can-do determination marks her out. The prompt for our conversation, over scrambled eggs and coffee in a grand London club where she greets the staff and they greet her, is her new choral work, Reign. She has been down in London from her home in Orkney, excited to hear the first rehearsals. For high voices and organ, with her own hymn-like lyrics, it was commissioned by the feminist arts festival Women of the World (WOW), and will be performed on Saturday, International Women's Day, at the Royal Albert Hall. The singers are 150 women, girls and non-binary people aged between eight and 80 years drawn from three London-based choirs, Mulberry School for Girls, St Boniface School and Lips. Wallen was part of the original WOW team, founded by Jude Kelly in 2010. Is this festival focused on women still vital? 'I think it is,' says Wallen, 66. 'The world has always been in turmoil but recently it has taken a step back. Women in all parts of the world have faced a backlash. Girls and young women are still forbidden to have education. Misogyny abounds. If I hadn't had access to free education, I'd never have had the chance to succeed.' A child of the Commonwealth, as she considers herself, Wallen grew up in Tottenham, north London. Singing has always been part of her life. She loves the English Hymnal, the definitive book of Anglican church music, and sees it as part of her cultural heritage. A talented pianist, Wallen frequently led her fellow pupils at her all-girls' boarding school in Sussex in rousing accounts of Jerusalem, one of her favourite hymns. When the BBC commissioned a new version from her, for the Last Night of the Proms 2020 – the year of Covid – she combined a homage to Hubert Parry's original with a sensitive new creation. The Proms played to an empty Albert Hall, but aired on TV and radio. Afterwards, she received hundreds of messages of abuse, essentially attacking her for daring to tamper with this national icon. Speaking to Radio 4's Desert Island Discs in July last year, she said: 'I spent the next day deleting abusive messages thinking, 'Well, actually, when was the last time somebody really talked about a new piece of music in the national press? So yeah, I'll take it.'' Wallen's own astonishing life reads likes a set of disturbing short stories, set out in her 2023 memoir, Becoming a Composer. Soon after arriving in Britain, when she was two, her parents decided they would rather live in New York. She and her siblings were left with a childless aunt and uncle, Belize-born Arthur and Renee, a white EastEnder. Errollyn expected her parents to send for her to join them. They never did, though later the children spent summers in New York. She loved her aunt and uncle, and accepted their hopes and anxieties as her own. Home life offered a culinary mix of pie and mash, jellied eels and, a nod to Belize cuisine, rice with everything. Later, the young Errollyn, who for many years wanted to be a ballerina, put herself on a diet of cake, strictly limited, and became very thin, one of many uneasy incidents that, today, might sound alarm bells. Her ambition to dance was abandoned when she was told there were no Black ballerinas. Uncle Arthur, perceptive as well as authoritarian, was the first to suggest the constant sounds in Errollyn's head might indicate she was a composer. He also helped her see wider horizons, introducing her to poetry, literature and concerts at London's Wigmore Hall. 'I never thought it was strange that we were the only Black people there,' she says. 'I felt I could go anywhere. I will always thank Uncle Arthur for that. It must have been very difficult for him at that time.' Obstacles and educational diversions aside – she ran away from school and, in her late teens, made a suicide attempt nobody talked about – she went to Goldsmiths College to study music. She was steeped in the music of Pierre Boulez, Benjamin Britten, JS Bach and, one of her all-time musical gods, Stevie Wonder. She became a session musician, which included an appearance on Top of the Pops, to her chagrin miming to a pre-recorded backing track with girl group Eternal (but she got to meet Cher, who admired her leopard-print waistcoat). She also set up her own ensemble. Somehow, and it is hard to imagine quite how, Wallen always hung on to an innate sense of worth, even as she was being crushed. 'Show me your scores and we can have a good laugh' one influential concert director told her, in the 1980s, when her male contemporaries were securing performances of their works by elite groups such at the London Sinfonietta. Were her aunt and uncle alive now, or her distant but proud parents, would they countenance her appointment by King Charles? It came as a surprise to Wallen herself. She assumed the call from a palace official was an invitation to a reception. 'I heard myself say 'yes'. I had friends with me who cushioned the shock.' She is beginning to think how to direct her energies to the role – a post in the royal household, not dissimilar to that of poet laureate, whose loosely specified duties include composing music for important royal events. One of her imminent premieres is a work for solo soprano to be sung at the Commonwealth 2025 service in Westminster Abbey next Monday. Our wide-ranging conversation is over, with many brightly coloured strands left hanging. Later that day Wallen will return home to solitude, composition, the sea at the bottom of the garden. (She used to live in a lighthouse near Thurso. She has since moved even farther north, close to where one of her predecessors, Master of the Queen's Music, Peter Maxwell Davies, lived.) She will drive back to the sound, a current obsession, of the Jackson Five's I Want You Back – 'not very modern I know!' – thinking about how their clever bass line could fit with one of her own pieces. The relief of being there is constant, she says. 'I'm a Londoner but I have to be able to go to the piano when I feel like it and bash away late at night. You can't do that in a London flat.' Before she went there, three Black friends said, 'Won't you feel scared, being a in a place with so few Black people?' Orcadians, she says, are like the people of Belize: gentle, welcoming, accepting. 'If I want to go somewhere, nothing's ever really stopped me. I just go ahead and do it.' Errollyn Wallen's Reign has its world premiere at WOW at 15 – an event featuring music and conversation at the Royal Albert Hall, London, on 8 March. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@ or jo@ In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at
