Errollyn Wallen is the composer of 22 operas, and counting, as well as numerous concertos, symphonies, song cycles and chamber works. Her music has been performed at major public celebrations such as the late Queen’s golden and diamond jubilees and the 2012 Paralympic Games. In 2022, she was in the top 20 most performed living composers worldwide. Her first orchestral commission, a concerto for percussion and orchestra, was performed at the Proms in 1998. This was, as she notes modestly in a footnote in her new book, the first time since the festival began in 1895 that a Black woman’s music had been performed there. She has since received the rare accolade of having a work premiered during the Last Night of the Proms, when her reimagining of Jerusalem was featured last year.
The prospect of a book that takes us behind the scenes of such creative success is enticing. The form and structure that she has chosen for Becoming a Composer is unusual, though. Rather than a conventional memoir, we get a patchwork of short essays, diary extracts, programme notes and poems. She invites the reader to “dip in and out”, but this fragmentary approach merely whets the appetite for a more joined-up version of her story.
