Errollyn Wallen

0:00BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts.

0:12Welcome to This Cultural Life, the series in which leading creative figures reveal the formative influences and experiences, the people, events and cultural works that inspired their own creativity. I'm John Wilson and my guest in this episode is the British composer Errolin Wallen.

0:33Born in Belize and brought up in North London she was the first ever woman to win an Ivor Novello Award for a body of work and the first ever black woman to have a composition played at the BBC Proms Errolin has written 22 operas as well as orchestral, chamber and choral works which are performed all around the world She was commissioned to write pieces to commemorate the Queen's Golden and Diamond Jubilees and for the opening of the 2012 London Paralympic Games. She lives and works in a lighthouse in the far north of Scotland.

1:13Eralyn Wallen, welcome to This Cultural Life. Hello, John. It's great to be here. You were born in 1958 in Belize. When did you first move to the UK? I was two years old and actually my earliest memory is of being on a plane. I could just remember sitting on my granny's lap, my sister Karen and I and our mother. My father was waiting to meet us. We hadn't seen him for a year, but he said I ran straight towards him. And already here were my uncle and aunt, Rini and Arthur Wallen. And my uncle had been in the RAF in the Second World War along with my other uncle, Edwin. And so that's why they were in England.

1:51And my father, being much younger, was coming over to study. So we were living separately. In other words, I was living with a mother and father. But then, bit by bit, I have to say, my parents drifted away. First of all, my father went to study in Trinidad. And then they both went to live in Brooklyn. Your parents did? Yes. And so I would have been about six, seven. This was a gradual process then. And you were living, as you say, between parents, between uncle and aunt's house. And then when they went, you were living with your uncle and aunt. So before they went, we were all living in a house in Tottenham.

2:25Tell me about your aunt and uncle. Well, from the moment I... You know, I love my mother, but she, even as a child, she wasn't that particularly... What's the word? She was often very ill with asthma, you know, all through her life, basically. So there was a lot of disruption, mummy having to go away, being this sort of invalid figure. But from the moment I met my aunt and uncle, I loved them, and I remember thinking, I want to stay with them. I don't necessarily want to go back to mum and dad. That was just as a baby. Because they were a lot of fun. And they didn't have children of their own.

3:00She was reany, you said. Reany. So East End, but real East End. She was a cockney. Oh, totally. We'd go somewhere, like a pie mashup, and she'd say things like, oh, this is not a pie mashup. There's no sodas on the floor. And she'd send off for jelly deals Sundays. And we'd have these curious meals of rice and beans, rose potatoes and mushy peas all on the same plate. But I'm very grateful for growing up in that household because we weren't like other children. We had this real sense of, I suppose, what it's like to be white and English. And also she had been evacuated in the Second World War.

3:37I mean, her family were very, very poor. And she never quite got over that. So she was always talking about going to stay with a family who didn't treat her well. So there's a sense of displacement on her side, but also your uncle, her husband, he was from Belize. So there's a complete cultural mash-up then in this household. And the other thing, well, the other complexity was that actually my uncle, he wanted to be a writer, but he was working, you know, he was highly educated and he believed in the arts and culture. I speak the way I speak because my uncle made us listen to the radio and copy people and we'd had elocution lessons and he made us recite poetry and he never ever spoke about the war and he's died now but I often think, what happened?

4:23It wouldn't have been a pleasant experience. He would have encountered racism which he wouldn't have known about in Belize. He came from quite a well-to-do family and so the culture shock would have been great. And his brothers, the other two uncles, you said they were in the RAF during the war. My uncle was in the RAF as was his older brother Edwin. In fact, Ed... Flying? Edwin was flying. Edwin was actually shot down twice. And if you're black, you see, you couldn't be a pilot. So he was probably working as an engineer in the plane. Yes, that's right. But the plane was shot down and the pilot was killed and he had to fly it back.

5:01And my dad told me a story that he was in Belize and it was the middle of the night. And his mother, my grandmother Sarah, ran in and said, something's happened to Edwin. And it had. She just felt it. Yeah. And getting back to your Aunt Rini, white Cockney woman, did she bring music to their house as well? I mean, it's probably a bit simplistic to suggest there were kind of knees-ups around the old piano on a Friday night. So she had a lovely singing voice, but she suffered throughout her whole life with us practising piano because she regarded music as noise, strangely. She was quite a nervous person, anxious, very anxious person.

5:37So when my brother was practising euphonium, that was a step too far. But she was always singing songs of the time, Vera Lynn. The house was full of music. My uncle and dad loved playing Calypso. They loved jazz. And my father started collecting these albums for children, which was an introduction to the composers. And the moment I started to play the piano, I was commandeered to play, you know, learn the popular tunes to play to everyone. We'll come on to the piano in a moment, but just tell me about your parents when they moved to New York. I presume you weren't seeing them very often, if at all.

6:12No, and I think something like maybe five years went by before I saw my dad again. It was, looking back, very peculiar. We were living in this sort of limbo, but the idea was that we would be sent for. But the fact is that we were never really sent for, but my mother would visit us every so often, maybe. I just can't remember, but I remember missing my parents, but at the same time not really wanting to be taken away. So it's a curious thing. So there was no lingering sense of loss then? You didn't feel like they had gone, they'd abandoned you? Or did you? A little bit. Certainly my sister Karen did.

6:50She's very close to my mother. And it was more, things weren't properly explained. I think the most difficult thing was this sense of split loyalties because my uncle and aunt were very anxious that we'd be taken away. And actually they were very, they were more, they could look after us better. I knew that instinctively. Anxious that you'd be taken away? from them by your parents yes oh very much so that that was always a lingering thing and so it meant that we could never you know the normal things if you fell over if you got sick everything was really minimized because they're so anxious that it would get back to our parents so it's a bit of a burden i don't know why they put up with it so your parents are still with us no sadly not they've gone.

7:31Everybody's gone.

7:37On this programme, Erin, I ask my guests to choose their formative cultural influences and experiences. And the first thing that you've chosen is the piano. When did you first start learning to play or when did you first come across a piano? Well, I'd been in hospital. I was four, I think, and I'd had pneumonia. That was quite a traumatic experience. But when I came out, there was a piano at home. But it was for my dad so that he could write songs. He'd written some really good songs and recorded them. So that piano stood there for at least a couple of years before I actually had any of us had lessons on it.

8:14And dad never played it. You say recorded them? Yes. What, professional recordings? And my dad had the most beautiful voice. And in fact, that's why I would never have thought of singing because I thought dad is the singer in this family absolutely lovely voice yeah if you let me have my way are the guys old have a say

8:42for all the things I do

8:48would be only just for you So did he start teaching you then? You would have thought so, but he didn't. In fact, he couldn't play the piano, but the piano was there as this lumbering thing, and it was when my cousin Stephanie, she showed me where the notes were on the piano. But I didn't start piano lessons until I was nine years old. I talked to it quickly and easily, and in a way I would say the piano was the thing that led me on to finding out about other bits of music, because I would learn a piece so quickly, I was hungry to find music to just play. So I would go to the library, just roundly take things off the shelf and play.

9:27But were you particularly drawn to the instrument itself, to the physicality of it? What did it represent to you? From the moment I started the piano, every dream at night was about the feeling of the piano. And if I was separated from it for any length of time, it was torment. So we would go in the summer. We started going to New York every summer for six weeks. But it was agony for me. And in fact, my mother went unknown to me, went to the doctors and said, is it OK if my daughter doesn't play the piano for six weeks? Because, you know, obviously I was exhibiting. And I kept trying to draw bits of piano.

10:01I said, Mum, can we just get a dummy piano and I can bring that over? But it was the tactile sensation of your hands on the notes. It was just, I don't know, it became part of me. You were dreaming about it as well every night. Dreaming, and it's as if the piano had become very soft and you're squeezing the notes. But the thing about the piano is, it's not that I'm a great pianist, but sitting at it, everything makes sense. And that I can solve any kind of problems, do anything in my life, I'm at the piano and things occur to me. And if I'm composing, not the composing is away from the piano, often.

10:36But when I sit at the piano, it's as if musical energy starts to take a lot of decisions. It's the physical with the mental. it just feels like my home

11:01Over the course of your career you've written operas and ballets a lot of chamber work and orchestral music does everything still start on the keyboard, on the piano? It doesn't always start at the piano But I feel I have to play through everything note by note. And even if I can't play it, say if you're playing in an orchestral score where there's maybe 60 parts, you can't actually get to all of them. But I feel to feel that time passing, you have to play it, you know what I mean, to get the experience of what the music will be like physically. And, you know what I'm saying, I can't do that away from the piano.

11:34It's a huge piece of kit, the piano, isn't it? There's an amazing video that I've seen. I should say, you live in an incredible location at the tip of Scotland in a lighthouse and there's a video of your piano being delivered. I've been delivering pianos for 30 years and never, ever done one like that to a lighthouse. Quite an uphill struggle. Quite an uphill struggle. And the story of that is I moved into the lighthouse and I thought, I can't be in one second without a piano, you have to get one. So I was ringing around and I happened to speak to this piano tune and he said, I'm in Tane, but I've got a piano at the back of my van.

12:09I can bring it up now. Well, the truth is the piano was pretty awful. But, you know, I can work on it. And I've since acquired another one up there, which is pretty awful. Why did you move to a lighthouse in the first place? I wanted to have somewhere where you could work undisturbed. I've always been of the opinion that as an artist, you shouldn't be too fancied. You should be able to work anywhere. And I never wanted to work in this ivory tower situation. But you can't get away from the fact that sometimes you need absolute quiet. I had three requirements. On top of the sea, nothing much going on, really.

12:45And also where I wouldn't disturb anybody, they wouldn't disturb me. And I stumbled across this website called lighthousesforsale.co.uk. I wasn't looking for a lighthouse. Yeah. I mean, it's a white building. It literally is an ivory tower, though, isn't it? I know. And I think, oh, dang, people will think I'm precious. but it's an incredible place to work because nobody can get to you see. It's been a surprise to me how that place has suited me. I don't get lonely and I get stressed because of a deadline maybe but I know it's a place where I know that there's no excuse for not working the optimum conditions.

13:22And of course every lighthouse looks straight out to sea so that's your view when you're composing. What does the sea give you? I often think look how busy the sea is. nobody's telling it what to do, it's not deliberating and it's doing its thing it's forever changing, that's what it is but I find that very comforting the sea reminds me just to get on with things

13:45you feel small it's good, it's good to feel small

13:53but you're feeling the force, the real true force of nature there aren't you it's the extremes Does that come into the music? Do you hear that in the music, do you think? I think if you have imagination, you should be able to work anyway. But there's something for me. I need to be on top of the sea. And that particular stretch of sea, it's wild. And I like that wildness. It's quite remarkably cosy inside. But sometimes the whole place rocks, you know. It feels as if you're on a ship. Sometimes it's so windy you can't go out.

14:35So the piano was there at home. Who were the role models? Were you listening to pianists and taking your inspiration from any particular musicians? My dad did say when I was about three that we really didn't watch television at home, but this one time the television was on and Winifred Atwell's playing, and she was swivelling from, I think, a white honky-tonk piano to a stymie. And my dad said he stood for ages waving his hand across my little face and I just was awestruck.

15:14She was a real star of... She was popular on television and she played a range of music. You see, I don't even know that much about her, really. That's the truth of it. But I have a record of... Black American pianist, wasn't she? And playing a variety of stars. So it was kind of classical but also jazz. Yes, very virtuosic and entertaining and she was hugely popular.

15:41Your next choice for this programme is your school English teacher, Elizabeth Pearce. Why have you chosen her? Well, I went to boarding school in East Sussex and there was a point where I was really thinking, yes, I really want to be a musician and it seemed impossible and hard. And though I loved my music teacher, she said to me, I just don't think you have the temperament. I'm not sure what she meant by that, but I really loved our English teacher because she brought with her a whole world of feeling and the sense that there's this world outside. We'd been reciting Tennyson and so thinking, wow, the world of words has always been crucially important to me and she sort of guided us.

16:23But one day she came up. I think we had a history teacher called Mr Black who was very musical and he said to me, he said, well, maybe you ought to be a composer because there aren't really many women composers. But Miss Pierce came up and just said one day, you know, you must always follow your path. But she thought about it and I thought, what an incredible thing to say. So inspired by the English teacher, the history teacher, but not the music teacher. Well, the thing about the music teacher, I did love her. but you know music training is a is a specific thing and it's it is shall we say more conservative environment but she thank goodness she put my technique back on track and taught me the to always aim for perfection so the english teacher said just follow your dreams do what you want to do and you knew already at that point or you were starting to realize that music was a calling yes but the calling for me was through the little dancing lessons we went to the Maureen Lyons School of Dancing in Tottenham, where we did a range of things, tap dancing, modern dancing, national dancing.

17:24But then we did ballet. And then in ballet, one day this pianist came and played this music. And I just couldn't believe it was Chopin.

17:40So dancing led me to music. I always really, if I'm honest, I wanted to be a dancer before I wanted to be a musician. But without knowing, I was already so steeped in music, I took the music for granted. And so I was sent to the school because they could see I was gutted. I said, I want to be a ballet dancer, I need to go to a residential ballet. I had it all worked out, and they said, no, you can't, we've never seen a ballet dancer. And somehow, I don't know how they got the money together, I went to this boarding school where they're supposed to be doing ballet. I got there, they're only doing half an hour a week.

18:14so at the age of 13 I knew that part of my life was over and I was very, very unhappy, very unhappy. So I would just spend all the time playing the piano. I had no idea it was anything.

18:39When did you start writing your own music? I always had been. I found everyday life quite boring so I'd make up little songs to sing and walk to school with my two sisters we would sing a song of mine we'd sing all the way there, all the way back and recently I had to write some songs for nine-year-olds and I was nine years old so I just put that song in it's called It's a Quarter to Nine So the very first piece that you wrote when you say it's called Quarter to Nine it was about the process of going to school it was the journey to school Yes, and what would happen Really? Can you remember how it goes?

19:11It's a quarter to nine We've got plenty of time, plenty of time for school. When the whistle blows, we all stand still Cos we know the rules, we know what to do And so should you It just sounds very of its time, actually. But we love, but we honestly would sing it. It's part of My Citizen Me, that little song. When I said, when did you start writing music, you said you were always writing music. Do you mean in your head? Oh, yes. You could always hear something going on. And there was a time, and it started to trouble me, and one day my uncle and I were walking to Ridley Road Market to get, as we always did, to get fruit and vegetables for the week.

19:55And I said to him, because I felt I could ask him this question, I said, Uncle Arthur, I can hear all these sounds in my head, but I just don't know what to do with them. And he said, oh, you might be a composer. And nothing more was said. But, you know, I now know what that sound is. That was the sound of electronics. and a string orchestra that I could hear these sounds but I couldn't find a way of getting them out, you know. So it was all literally buzzing around in your head but it had no outlet. Yeah, and you didn't have the technique maybe to bring those sounds out to the world. I definitely, all the time there's sounds, calculations.

20:29I'm thinking about a piece I'm writing now, pieces to come. It's just all computing in there. It's one thing to sing a song with your friends on the way to school. Another thing to sit down at the keyboard and start expressing. through those keys, the sort of melodies that are happening in your head. When did that start seriously? Very good question. Teenage years, I guess. Trying to write things for, say, maybe groups of instruments. I would have started with songs, probably. I remember setting Ted Hughes, Kathleen Rain, Philip Larkin, when I was sort of about 16. But, you know, my notational skills weren't very good.

21:06But I could remember how everything went. You were setting the poems to music? Yes. Did you think of becoming a singer-songwriter? No, not at all, because my dad was the singer, that's the whole point, and I didn't think I had a particularly good voice. So the songs I was setting, those Ted Hughes, they're like art songs for maybe a professional singer to sing, but then I started to write songs where I was singing and playing, and those just started to tumble out and seemed to combine classical music and jazz and popular music, and I just don't know where that came from. They just really came unbidden, these songs.