Errollyn Wallen MBE

Goldsmiths alumna Errollyn Wallen is
a multi award-winning composer and performer.
Her prolific output includes twenty-two operas and a large catalogue of orchestral, chamber and vocal works which are performed and broadcast throughout the world.

She was the first black woman to have a work featured in the BBC Proms and the first woman to receive an Ivor Novello award for Classical Music for her body of work.

Errollyn was awarded an MBE in 2007, and in 2009 her albums were launched into space as part of NASA’s STS-115 mission. Since then, she has composed two large-scale works for the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Paralympic Games, for the Queen’s Golden and Diamond Jubilees, a specially commissioned song for the climate change conference, COP 26, 2021, and a re-imagining of Jerusalem for BBC’s Last Night of the Proms 2020. She is one of the top 20 most performed living composers of classical music in the world.

Errollyn founded her own Orchestra X whose album, Photography, was named as one of the best classical albums of 2016 by National Public Radio in the USA. 

In August 2024 King Charles III appointed Errollyn as Master of the King’s Music.

In 2019, Goldsmiths awarded Errollyn Wallen an honorary fellowship.