Errollyn Wallen is the first black woman to be appointed Master of the King’s Music by King Charles. The Belize-born composer, pianist and singer-songwriter, who has composed pieces for the BBC Proms, the 2012 Paralympic Games and the Jubilees of Queen Elizabeth II, succeeds Dame Judith Weir, who was appointed by the late Queen and was the first woman to hold the 10-year post.

Masters of the King’s or Queen’s Music are appointed to compose pieces for special royal occasions such as royal weddings, jubilees and coronations. The title is given to musicians who have contributed to the nation’s musical life. Wallen said: “I am delighted to accept this royal appointment… I look forward to promoting music and music-making for all.”

Wallen’s work is one of the most performed living composers, and includes 22 operas as well as numerous orchestral, chamber and vocal works. In 1998, she became the first black woman to perform at the BBC Proms and the first woman to receive an Ivor Novello Award for classical music.

“The calling to become a musician was stronger than any other consideration,” she told Lauren Laverne in a recent episode of CDs for the desert island. “If I could help dispel the myth that a composer only has to be white and male, that can only be a good thing.”

Wallen was born in Belize in 1958 and moved to the UK with her parents when she was two. When her parents later moved to New York, she was raised by her aunt and uncle in north London. She told Laverne that she was musical from a young age, singing in her cot as a baby and enjoying music lessons in primary school. As a child, she told her uncle that she had “a head full of sounds”. He suggested she could be a composer.

Her father performed as a singer in clubs in the north and brought home a piano, for which she discovered a natural talent at the age of five. “As a child, I always dreamed of the piano when I went to bed and could hardly tear myself away from it,” she said.

She went on to study music at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and then did a Masters in composition at King’s College, Cambridge. The piano continued to play a central role in her work. She said she begins her compositions by improvising on the instrument. “I feel like an explorer,” Wallen said.

To earn money after graduating, Wallen played in nursing homes, as part of an alternative comedy act, and as a session musician for heavy metal, jazz and reggae bands, and even appeared on Top of the Pops.

Earlier this year, she said, “I wanted to be a composer, but I had absolutely no idea how to get through it.” The field was dominated by white men. In 1987, she and other female composers, musicians and managers founded Women in Music, an organization that sought to address this imbalance. Wallen began to forge her own path, forming the group Ensemble X, which first performed some of her works in 1990. Their motto was, “We don’t break down barriers in music… we don’t see any.”

During the 1990s, Wallen established herself as a respected classical composer, leading to her Proms debut in 1998 with Concerto for percussion and orchestrawhich used jazz and dance rhythms from Africa and Latin America. In 2020, she reworked Jerusalem for the Last Night of the Proms to reflect the Commonwealth’s connection to the song and dedicated it to the Windrush generation. She told Laverne that she was shocked to receive “insulting” messages afterwards: “I didn’t realise there was an issue, that there were certain sacred things that no black person was allowed to touch.”

Her opera from 2009 YES was inspired by Bonnie Greer’s confrontation with the leader of a right-wing party in the BBC programme Question timewhile Principles And Mind in motion were composed for the opening ceremony of the 2012 Paralympic Games in London and inspired by the athletes.

Wallen was awarded an MBE in 2007 and a CBE in 2020. She now lives and composes in a Scottish lighthouse.