Errollyn Wallen (born April 10, 1958) is a Belize-born British composer. Life Errollyn Wallen moved to London with her family when she was two. While her parents moved to New York, she and her three siblings (one of whom is the trumpeter Byron Wallen) were brought up by an aunt and uncle and she was educated at a boarding school. She credits her interest in poetry and music to her uncle whom she described in an interview as "Victorian" and responsible for her taking lessons in piano. Before studying music, she trained as a dancer at the Maureen Lyons School of Dance and the Urdang Academy, both in London. She moved to New York to further her training at the Dance Theatre of Harlem (1976-8) but later abandoned her training, turned to music composition and returned to the UK. She studied music at Goldsmiths (1981) and composition at King's College London (1983), and earned an MPhil at King's College, Cambridge. Wallen has stated that she had begun composing professionally before her studies at Cambridge University. Compositions Wallen's music draws on a wide range of influences, including avant-garde classical music as well as popular songwriting. Her work has been performed in leading concert halls and theatres around the world. Her first orchestral commission was a concerto for percussion and orchestra, written for percussionist Colin Currie and premiered by him during the finals of the BBC Young Musician competition in 1994. This piece was subsequently performed at the 1998 BBC Proms, making Wallen the first black female composer to receive a performance at that festival. Compositions include the "multi-media song cycle"Jordan Town (2001), Dervish for cello and piano (2001), La Luga for guitar quintet (2002), the opera Another America: Earth (2003) and All the Blues I See for flute and string quartet (2004). In 2006 she co-wrote a song with the astronaut Steve MacLean while he was aboard the space shuttle STS-115. In 2007, Gewandhaus Orchestra and the Leipzig Ballet performed her work, The Tempest, with choreography by James McMenemy. Her opera The Silent Twins, with a libretto by April De Angelis, was first performed by the Almeida Opera in 2007. In June 2008, she had a World Premiere of Carbon 12- A Choral Symphony with the Welsh National Opera. In 2010, her piano quintet Music for Tigers was performed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City as part