errollyn wallen
Errollyn Wallen’s piano quintet “Music for Tigers” (2006) is as picturesque as Mr. Snow’s work, if not as overtly comic. But Ms. Wallen’s vital rhythms and inventive melodies keep her work lively, and the players — Alicia Choi and Heidi Schaul-Yoder, violinists; Eva Gerard, violist; Mimi Yu, cellist; and Hsiang John Tu, pianist — gave her work, like the others, a firm, warm-spirited and finely polished performance.

Article by Allan Kozinn
NY Times 26/07/2010
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What got you started?
Coming out of hospital after an operation when I was five to find a piano in the living room. My parents had to beg me to stop practising.

What was your big breakthrough?
Forming Ensemble X in 1990 to perform my music. I wanted to give concerts I would like to go to myself. At our first concert, we handed out Mars bars.

What's the biggest myth about composing?
That it's a rarefied activity carried out by dead white men in wigs.

What song would feature on the soundtrack to your life?
Dido's Lament from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. There's something transcendent about it.

Do you suffer for your art?
Sometimes. While I was writing the oratorio Carbon-12 for Welsh National Opera earlier this year, I told myself I could eat as much as I liked as long as I kept going: I gained 10lbs.

What's your favourite film?
Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker. I first saw it as a student, and loved the fact I wasn't always sure what was going on.

In the movie of your life, who plays you?
Pam Grier. I'd like to be as sexy as her.

What's your favourite museum?
The Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia in Rome. There's an amazing Etruscan sarcophagus of a married couple, both wearing mysterious smiles.

What have you sacrificed for your art?
Daytime television.

Complete this sentence: At heart I'm just a frustrated ...
Ballet dancer. When I was 12 I wanted to go to ballet school, but my aunt and uncle said they wouldn't send me because they'd never seen a black ballet dancer before. It was terribly painful.

What's the greatest threat to music?
The lack of silence. People seem frightened of silence, yet you have to revere it in order to really celebrate music.

What advice would you give a young composer?
Follow your ears.

What work of art would you most like to own?
Howard Hodgkin's painting Rain. It inspired the mix of one of my songs.

Is there anything about your career you regret?
Not playing the organ for Billy Smart's circus. They called me once about an advert I'd placed offering myself as a keyboard player. I told them I didn't play the organ; now I wish I'd given it a go. In short

Career: Has written songs, chamber music and operas, and released three solo albums. She performs songs from the Errollyn Wallen Songbook at Riverside Studios, London W6 (020-8237 1111) on Thursday.

High point: "Seeing a photograph of my album Errollyn floating in a shuttle in outer space. An astronaut friend had taken it with him."

Low point: "Getting accidentally locked in a basement practice room for 11 hours in 2000."

Interview by Laura Barnett
The Guardian 29/07/2008
www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/jul/29/classicalmusicandopera1

NEW BOOK & NEW TELEVISION SERIES THIS CULTURAL LIFE BBC Radio 4 WALLEN IN TOP 20 MOST PERFORMED LIVING COMPOSERS
Errollyn's forthcoming book Becoming a Composer will be published Faber by November 2nd

Musical Masterpieces is a new 3 part series for Sky Arts presented by Myleene Klass and Errollyn Wallen ( Sep 25; Oct 2; Oct 9 at 8pm)
Errollyn Wallen
This Cultural Life

Errollyn Wallen is one of Britain's most acclaimed and widely performed contemporary composers.
Errollyn tells John Wilson how, after to moving to London from Belize with her parents at a young age, she was brought up by an aunt and uncle in Tottenham. An early love of ballet led her to discover the music of Chopin, and she started to learn the piano at home. She describes the huge influence of Bach on her compositions, but also how her work is influenced by a wide range of music, from avant garde composers to jazz and funk.

Producer: Edwina Pitman
The report, carried out by online classical music magazine Bachtrack, is based on 27,124 listings for performances of living composers, which took place in 2022.
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