Becoming A Composer

Errollyn Wallen CBE is a multi award-winning Belize-born British composer named as one of the world’s top twenty most performed living classical composers. His Majesty The King has appointed Ms Errollyn Wallen CBE as Master of the King's Music; the first appointment to this role of his reign.

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 Wallen is as much at home in jazz and pop as in the classical world. Part memoir, Becoming a Composer 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 and seeks to shed light on the way a composer sees and hears the world.