She has been dubbed the ‘
TikTok
Organist’, receiving widespread praise for her accessible, charismatic and playful videos about her favourite instrument.
Now, Anna Lapwood – who is seen as classical music’s answer to
Taylor Swift
– has been handed her biggest role yet as the Royal Albert Hall’s first official organist.
Aged just 29, she has racked up more than two million social media followers and is fast becoming a trailblazer for young women in a field traditionally populated by men.
Miss Lapwood, from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, first performed at the iconic
London
venue as a teenager in 2012 when she was in the National Youth Orchestra.
The
BBC
and Classic FM presenter attended Oxford High School and then Magdalen College, Oxford, where she was its first female organ scholar – going on to join Pembroke College,
Cambridge
in 2016 where she became director of music.
In June last year Miss Lapwood – who uses the hashtag #PlayLikeAGirl – was made an MBE for services to music in the
New Year Honours
, urging
Princess Anne
upon receiving the award that she should take up the organ and play at
Windsor Castle
.
She stepped down from her role at Pembroke in February to focus on her career as a concert organist, and was named last month on the Sunday Times’ Young Power List, celebrating the most powerful 30 people under 30 in the UK.
Miss Lapwood had been a Royal Albert Hall associate artist from 2022, and her latest headline performance at the venue on May 15 sold out in under 24 hours.
In four-star reviews for the show, the Guardian said she was ‘charismatic enough to sell out a midweek gig and have a packed hall eating out of her hand’, while the Times told how she ‘mixed the music with an almost Adele-like level of personal chat’.
She was also a soloist during the 2021 BBC Proms season, and has since headlined the venue – as well as teaching Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Cruise about its famous organ. Miss Lapwood can also play the piano, violin, viola and the harp.
Now, the venue has employed her in a new as the first ‘Organist of the Royal Albert Hall’ with the aim of increasing national access to organ and choral music.
She will be headlining auditorium concerts and making guest appearances with artists, while also trying to increase accessibility to the organ by holding open sessions.
The venue’s organ was the biggest musical instrument in the world when it was unveiled 154 years ago, described by its builder Henry Willis as ‘The Voice of Jupiter’.
It was played at the Hall’s opening ceremony in 1871, where its wind system was powered by two steam engines.
Musicians who have performed on the instrument include Camille Saint-Saëns, Anton Bruckner, Pink Floyd’s Richard Wright, and the rock band Muse.
Miss Lapwood – who has played with artists such as Bonobo, Aurora, Raye and Florence and the Machine – was described by Harper’s Bazaar as ‘classical music’s Taylor Swift’.
The publication added: ‘Like Swift, Lapwood is a once-in-a-generation talent: she’s irreverent, charismatic, a born performer and a whip-smart communicator. Dispel all your preconceptions about what an organ recital might ordinarily entail.’
The New York Times has called her ‘the world’s most visible organist’.
Miss Lapwood, who opened the Baftas in 2019 at the Royal Festival Hall, has also just released a new album called Firedove which includes original compositions – and has curated an all-night BBC Prom taking place in August.
Speaking about her new role, she said: ‘I feel very lucky to have been allowed access to the incredible instrument at the Royal Albert Hall over the last few years and it has taught me so much, so I’m incredibly excited to be continuing my partnership with the Hall as its official organist.’
She added that she was looking forward to opening up access to the instrument to more organists, starting with the launch of a new organ scholarship.
It comes after Miss Lapwood discovered the organ aged 15 when it was brought to her attention by her mother, a paediatric nurse.
Back in June last year, Miss Lapwood – whose father was a Church of England priest – revealed she had told the Princess Royal to take up the organ and play at Windsor Castle.
The musician said after receiving her MBE: ‘I said ‘Have you ever had to go on the organ?’ and she said ‘No, I haven’t, I think it’s a bit late’. And I was like ‘Oh, I think you can I think you could do it, you should do it’.’
Miss Lapwood also said that they had talked about the importance of making women feel comfortable in music, adding that the organ was a ‘previously male-dominated world’.
In September 2022, she famously had an impromptu duet with a passing security guard at London Bridge station in the days after Queen Elizabeth II died.
Miss Lapwood stopped to play the organ at the station when she was approached by a security guard called Marcella, who revealed she was a classically trained singer.
The pair performed the national anthem, God Save The King, and then at the request of Marcella, Miss Lapwood launched into a rendition of Lascia ch’io pianga by Handel.
Miss Lapwood posted a clip of her duet with Marcella on X and the video quickly went viral, racking up over three million views.
And back in January 2021 she hit the headlines for her humorous reaction to being put on hold to the same movement of a Mozart symphony for over an hour.
Miss Lapwood found herself listening to the same segment of the piece whilst stuck on hold to E.On Energy for 70 minutes – so she started playing along with her electronic pipe organ at home.
Speaking to Classic FM in 2019, she said: ‘When I took up the organ, I really had no idea what world I was getting into.
‘I feel there’s a responsibility to help provide the opportunity for young girls to realise they could be an organist too. I think the reason they don’t take it up is because they don’t even think about it.
‘They don’t see visible female role models playing the organ. It tends to be seen as either something for a certain kind of man or a little old lady, and that’s not something a little girl is going to aspire to be.’
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