In Focus: Errollyn Wallen

The Royal Northern College of Music and Wigmore Hall are delighted to present a day of music to celebrate the work of internationally renowned Belize-born British composer Errollyn Wallen.

Last year Errollyn composed MY SOUL, a song for Kelly Hall-Tompkins' MUSIC KITCHEN in the USA and the work will receive a further performance at Zandel Hall, part of Carnegie Hall.

MUSIC KITCHEN takes classical music to the homeless in a two way exchange and the words of Errollyn's song ( for mezzo soprano and string quartet) are set to the words of an anonymous audience member.

An exciting commission from Royal Birmingham Conservatoire for a piano concerto for Rebeca Ormodia
To be premiered at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire.

A stranger has arrived in town. He’s lost everyone and everything. But things are about to change.

Produced and commissioned by Streetwise Opera in partnership with Middlesbrough Town Hall and Ryedale Festival.

Roderick Williams and Streetwise Opera join forces to stage an immersive retelling of Schubert’s Winter Journey with original words and music by Errollyn Wallen.

A stranger has arrived in town. He’s lost everyone and everything. But things are about to change.

Produced and commissioned by Streetwise Opera in partnership with Middlesbrough Town Hall and Ryedale Festival.

Roderick Williams and Streetwise Opera join forces to stage an immersive retelling of Schubert’s Winter Journey with original words and music by Errollyn Wallen.

The story of Dido and Aeneas didn’t end with Dido’s death. Errollyn Wallen takes the story forward, interweaving a full performance of Purcell’s great tragedy with her imaginative new partner-piece.

‘Remember me, but ah! Forget my fate' sings Dido at the end of Purcell’s opera. But life isn’t quite as easy as that, and some memories have a destiny of their own. Set several years after the Carthaginian queen’s death, Dido’s Ghost finds Dido’s sister Anna abandoned on the shores of Aeneas’s new kingdom, igniting a murderous jealously in Aeneas’s wife Lavinia – and as events play out, its characters confront a past that refuses to fade.

Errollyn Wallen’s new opera, based on a tale by Roman poet Ovid, embraces and complements Purcell’s original, which is performed in its entirety as the centrepiece of a drama that is both old and new. Performed by the period instruments of the Dunedin Consort, past blurs into present and memory becomes emotion in this ambitious and poignant new commission.