Inside the Music with organ sensation Anna Lapwood

Anna Lapwood is a British organist, conductor, and broadcaster celebrated for her dynamic performances and clever arrangements for organ. She has become a trailblazer in expanding the organ's audience, performing in cathedrals and concert halls around the world and collaborating with world-renowned artists. Ahead of her upcoming world tour, we spoke with Anna about her musical journey, how she became a social media star, her mission to make the organ more accessible, and more.

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Interview with Anna Lapwood

This interview was transcribed from a video call

Sheet Music Direct ("S"): Firstly, can you tell us how you started out in music, and when you started playing the organ?

Anna Lapwood ("A"): So I started playing the piano I think when I was probably about four. There was a piano teacher in the village where I grew up, and she was called Christine Wild, and she kind of taught all the local kids. We all went to her house, and I remember she had this little garden with fairy strawberries, tiny little strawberries, and we were allowed to pick them after the lesson. It’s funny, the sort of little things you remember about your first musical experiences. But yeah, I started on piano, and then I remember just loving taking up as many instruments as I could and translating the skills of one instrument onto another, and taking the same music and translating it onto another and seeing how they kind of differed. I used to go to charity shops and spend my pocket money on new instruments, and then taught myself a whole load of different things.

I didn't come to the organ until much later, until I was 14-15. At that point, I was a harpist, so harp was going to be my thing. I'd done grade eight and was principal of various orchestras and things. And then I remember my mum turning around to me one day and saying, "Have you ever thought of taking up the organ?" And I was like, "Don't be ridiculous, mum. I hate the organ. It's a stupid instrument. I'm a harpist. Why would I take up the organ?" And then I did end up taking it up, and it wasn't like an instant falling in love with it thing. In fact, I think it was very much my least favourite instrument when I started playing it because I found it so hard and it was so much harder than any other instrument I tried. But there was something about that challenge that made me really determined to try and figure out how to do it, and then it sort of took over, probably about the age of 20 was when I really shifted to organ as my main thing.

I remember just loving taking up as many instruments as I could and translating the skills of one instrument onto another."

S: So I suppose the moral of the story is mums are always right?

A: Yeah, almost always.

S: And who were your personal musical inspirations growing up in those formative years?

A: I always say my brother was kind of my biggest inspiration in that he is two years older than me and I just idolized him so much. And what would always happen is he would take up an instrument and I would be like, wow, that's the coolest thing in the world. And then I would kind of sneak in when he'd stop practicing and I would start practicing. But he didn't really practice much. And so I would always take over, and then he would give up and take another instrument and I would do the same thing. So he was very much my kind of early musical inspiration. Um, and then, I mean, I grew up listening to all sorts of different musical things. My dad had a very eclectic music taste, so I listened to a lot of Aled Jones and Vanessa-Mae and Libera. That crossover style of music was very much my kind of bread and butter as a kid. I had a lot of different musical heroes based on whoever my parents happened to play, basically.

S: You've obviously been a hugely successful musician for many years, but maybe under the radar for those outside of the classical music world. At what point would you say you crossed over to bonafide social media star?

A: I don't really know. The thing I think of as the catalyst moment, like the pivotal moment, was the concert I did with Bonobo which was three years ago now. I'd been made associate artist at the Royal Albert Hall, and the hall had asked “What would you love to happen in an ideal world, if we could just wave a magic wand?” And I had said I would love it if it became a thing where any artist who came to the hall could use the organ and wanted to use the organ, whatever genre it was. And we all were like, well, nice idea, but it's not going to happen. And then I think maybe a month later, I was doing an overnight rehearsal and there was a big screen behind me so I couldn't see the stage. And some people shouted up from the stage and said, "Can you play the Toccata and Fugue in D minor?" And so I did, and then I invited them up and it was Bonobo's band. And long story short, I ended up joining their show the next day, and it was their last show of that run.

Up until that point, I think I'd only really done classical. If you'd asked me to do a show where I wouldn't get the music until about three hours before the show, I would say no. If you'd said, you're going to have to improvise as part of it, I would have said no. And then it just happened. And it was this magic we all felt at the time. The whole crowd just went absolutely nuts. Like it was kind of almost a religious experience. And then it went completely crazy on social media straight afterwards. So I think the video from that got something like a million likes, and that still is the one concert people point back to. I still get people coming who say, I discovered you because of the Bonobo video, and they now come to all my concerts. So I guess that was kind of the pivotal moment.

S: Well, that might actually answer my next question which is whether there's a particular performance you've done that kind of stands out for you as a career highlight?

A: Bonobo is definitely one I think, just because of what it felt like it signified for me at the time. Up until that point, for whatever reason, I had held the belief or absorbed the belief that classical music is in some way better, that it is the pinnacle of music, which I now think is just total nonsense. I think all sorts of different musical styles can be the pinnacle. But I think it was that moment of feeling like my musical world literally exploded at the point of that concert in the middle of the concert. And I was sitting there crying. More recently, Cologne Cathedral has been a crazy thing. We had 13,000 people show up for my concert which we weren't expecting. So we ended up doing two concerts and we still had to turn away 5,000 people which I am still upset about in that I didn't realise there were still 5,000 people outside otherwise I would have probably tried to do a third concert! But yeah, that was quite a pivotal moment. Again in terms of seeing the real impact that the social media side of things has had, because I think it's very easy for people to look at the social media stuff and be like, "Ah, but it's not the real world, right?" And then they all came to the concert and that's crazy.

For whatever reason, I had held the belief or absorbed the belief that classical music is in some way better, that it is the pinnacle of music, which I now think is just total nonsense."

S: So very recently you stepped down as director of music at Pembroke College in Oxford. Can you talk us through that decision and what led to that?

A: It was the hardest decision of my life, really - there's no other way of saying it. I was there for nine years, and I'm so proud of the students that I was able to work with and the girl choristers, and I'm proud of everything that I achieved there, because it went from being somewhere that wasn't really known about chorally to somewhere that I think people actually have a lot of respect for chorally. For several years I'd been stretching myself really thinly because it's a full time job. Anyone who does performing to a high level knows that that is also a full time job and incredibly demanding in terms of the mental energy and the just the regular practice you need to be doing to keep up the standard so that you can keep performing to that level. I kept feeling like I was being torn between two versions of myself, and it was hard because I love them both equally. I feel like when I was in choral, organ-land didn't exist and vice versa. But then increasingly I was starting to think I got that job when I was 20, and I could imagine myself staying in that job for literally my entire life because I loved it so much.

But I think I would have always had a sense of what if I'd done the other thing? What if I'd taken that other path? And I feel like I've been so lucky in being given this opportunity to try the other path and to have a career as a performing organist, so I owe it to myself and also to all of my amazing supporters. I owe it to them to try and to see how it goes. So yeah, I made the choice to leave and told them about a year ago, so that they had a really good run in to find a good replacement. And Luke, the person who's taken over is incredible. I will miss them so much…I have just got to the point where I don't cry when I talk about it, which is good. But yeah, I'm excited for what's next.

S: So onto arranging. How do you decide on what you're going to arrange? Is it music that you particularly enjoy? Or music you think will work really well for organ?

A: It's quite chaotic. I'm sure my manager would also wish that I was more organized in my approach to all of this stuff, but really it's quite spontaneous. I sort of have a running list of things that I want to arrange, which is often just the music that I adore or things that people have asked me to arrange. Often I'll sit down and try and start arranging something, and it just isn't happening on that day for whatever reason. And then randomly, I can never say why, but randomly I'll sit down and be like, "Oh, here we go. There it is." This happened to me actually two days ago. I was in Norway to do a concert, and I just had a burst of inspiration and wrote a new arrangement of "Romantic Flight" from How to Train Your Dragon in an hour, sitting at the cathedral organ. And it's funny, for me, it has to be ready in my brain. I have to be in the right place to work on something.

I think there are two kinds of arrangements that I find I do. One is the more spontaneous side, which is like How to Train Your Dragon. All of that stuff tends to come out pretty almost fully formed. And then there are the bigger projects, which are much more a labor of love. So Pirates of the Caribbean which is the most recent one I've done, that was years in the making. It was something that I wanted to do for such a long time, and then finally got around to recently. The next one I'm hoping to do is Lord of the Rings, which similarly is going to be a much more time consuming process with a lot of revision. But with all of this music, I've listened to it so many hundreds of times that it's always kind of purring around in the background, waiting until it's sorted itself out in my head.

S: Brilliant. So, you just alluded to the fact you upload your arrangements to ArrangeMe, so people can buy them on Sheet Music Direct and other partner sites. Can you tell why you started using ArrangeMe and what you like about it?

A: I mean, the honest answer is that my management told me this is the best way to do it. I had said that I really wanted to publish my arrangements because I'd had so many requests, and obviously we wanted to make sure that we were doing everything right from the legal perspective as well. ArrangeMe made it very, very easy to make sure that you had ticked all the right boxes from a legal perspective and to give you that kind of peace of mind. And yeah, it's been so kind of straightforward - it allows you to be very quick and responsive. So often if I do literally just write an arrangement, I can have it up ready to sell the next day, which, given how fast things move on social media can be extremely helpful. And similarly, if I want to change anything, I can just edit it and then it's there, ready to go.

S: Your arrangements of "Test Drive" from How to Train Your Dragon and "Interstellar" have both been extremely successful, but putting that success to one side, have you got a personal favorite arrangement?

A: Da Vinci Code is probably the one. Other than Pirates of the Caribbean, which is currently my kind of obsession, I guess. Pirates of the Caribbean I'm doing in all my concerts at the moment. That's got my heart in it. It's also the soundtrack which I have loved the longest. It has been one of those soundtracks which I’ve listened to every day from the age of, I don't know, 15 all the way through. So that is very special. But Da Vinci Code, I think is special in a different way, in that I have used it to open a lot of my concerts. It has gained a huge amount of significance for me with the kind of relationship with the community that's built around it. But also it was actually the first piece of film music that I ever "transcribed," in that when I first saw the film as a teenager, I remember crying when I heard that bit of music. I was a bit of a nerd, so I was like, why am I crying? And that evening, I basically took my headphones and I found the track on my iPod, and I sat there with manuscript paper. I was actually under the covers with a torch and manuscript paper and headphones, and I wrote out the harmony. I kept pausing it, because I wanted to work out how it had given me that emotional response. There's something about that kind of childlike curiosity that has stayed with me all the way through, and it fuses into that particular piece of music. So yeah, that always feels particularly special when I play it.

S: I love that. Is there anything that you've always wanted to arrange, but either you haven't got around to it, or maybe you tried and it didn't work?

A: There are a couple, and with all of these, I tend to think that it just isn't the right time for it yet. I feel like my transcriptions have developed a lot in the last two years in terms of what I write for myself and how far I push myself. So Pirates of the Caribbean is insanely difficult to play because I push myself harder now with the transcriptions. So some of them, I think, are still just waiting for me to push myself to the next bit. And I think when I've tried Lord of the Rings, my experience so far is that it's not quite there. Also there was one movement of Pirates of the Caribbean that I tried to transcribe, but it needs a bit more time, and that's "Up Is Down". I want to write this really virtuosic pedal work, but I haven't quite figured out how to make that work alongside everything else that needs to go on at the same time. Then another one that I have been wanting to do and have started a couple of times is The Lion King because there are some incredible moments in that. But again it's wanting to get the right amount of detail. So yeah, I have a whole load of half started transcriptions. And in all those cases, I am planning on coming back to them.

S: The Lion King would sound amazing! The organ has probably never been seen as a "cool" instrument, but it feels like you're making it cool. Do you think you've inspired others to take up the organ?

A: Yeah. I think that's what motivates me. The number of times I get messages or actually meet people in person, children in particular, who say "I took up the organ because of your video of X, Y, and Z." And I think, again, this is the power of social media. I think it's really easy for people who maybe don't spend time on social media and don't necessarily understand how it's used now to kind of roll their eyes and be like, "Oh, influencers, blah blah, blah," but actually the power to let young people stumble across really exciting things like the pipe organ and classical music, and to show them that the person who plays this stuff is a normal human being like them, a flawed human being like them. I think the power to inspire a new generation is a really exciting thing. Of course you get a bit of criticism every now and then, particularly during film scores and stuff. But when I hear even one person say they've taken up the organ because of what I do, that drowns out 50 of the bad comments, because that's what it's about in my mind.

When I hear even one person say they've taken up the organ because of what I do, that drowns out 50 of the bad comments, because that's what it's about in my mind."

S: Yeah. That's fantastic. And going on from that, you've previously talked about the importance of making women feel comfortable in music, particularly in male-dominated worlds like the organ world. Have you seen an increase in women in the worlds you occupy in recent years?

A: Yeah, definitely. At the start of my career, it was kind of the big talking point. It's all that anyone would talk about in an interview with me. It was actually quite annoying because I would do kind of two hour long interviews, and then they would focus in on the three minutes that we talked about gender, and that would be the entire article. So it took a long time for me to not just be seen as "the female organist". And I think the fact that I'm no longer seen as "the female organist" is a win in itself, because it's a part of who I am, but it's not everything. I've been working quite hard to try and encourage more young female organists to think about taking up the instrument. When I was asked to set up the Cambridge Organ Experience for girls a few years back, the first time we did it, there were 20 girls, most of whom hadn't played the organ before, and by the last one we did, we had 90, and most of them did play the organ. So that, for me is a clear sign that change has happened. I still think there's more to be done. I would like to see equal numbers of women and men in the top organ jobs, and it's just trying to shift the perception that had existed for a while that if a female organist was good, she was the exception, as opposed to just assuming that a female organist would be good. I also think some people say, "Oh, well, look at you, you're successful. That means there's not a problem with gender in the organ world." But one person doesn’t mean that we've fixed everything. I think more work still needs to be done.

S: Absolutely. And so you were awarded MBE last year. How did that feel? Was that completely out of the blue?

A: It was completely out of the blue. I remember getting the letter and just bursting into tears. And actually, by complete coincidence, my parents were there that day. They were arriving that evening, and I got to tell them in person and showed them the letter, which was really special. It felt like a really big moment, both in terms of recognition for the instrument on a national scale, but also I've had a lot of criticism over the years; many people have told me that the route I'm taking is wrong and is not the right way to do it, and it's embarrassing and all this stuff. And there's something about getting an MBE that's slightly hard to argue with. There are still people who are like, "Oh, she doesn't deserve it". But it's sort of like a little mark in the sand to be like, "Well, it seems to be okay at the moment". So yeah, it was a really special thing. It's on the shelf there behind me!

S: Amazing! So outside of arranging and playing yourself, are there any specific artists or composers that you particularly enjoy listening to or playing?

A: I love listening to Melody Gardot. She's a jazz singer and she's been my constant companion all the way through. I used to listen to her as a teenager, and I still listen to her the whole time. Also Samara Joy. I adore jazz - that's the music I will put on when I'm not thinking about work stuff. AURORA too, I've got to know her music more recently, having worked with her, and I love it. I often put her on when I'm going swimming or trying to be active in some way. And then film scores. I listen to film scores 24/7. Whenever I'm working, I have a playlist, which is the "Stop Procrastinating Playlist," and it's a whole load of film scores that are quite sort of driven.

S: And lastly, what's next for Anna Lapwood?

A: It's a bit mad. I've got 85 concerts in the next 12 months. I'm really excited about it because I think I've figured out what I want to say at the moment, at least as a musician, through film music and through the fusion of film music and classical organ repertoire. Getting to do that literally all over the world is really exciting. I'm doing two weeks at the Sydney Opera House, and all these amazing, iconic venues that I've always wanted to play in. My plan is to just keep taking stock and keep saying, write what feels like it's working, what feels like it's not working, and keep adjusting accordingly because I'm aware it's a very new phase for me. I'm going to be doing lots more playing with orchestras, which I'm really excited about. We've commissioned this new concerto from Max Richter, which I'm going to be performing quite a lot. And I'll also be doing the Jongen Symphony, which is a piece I've always wanted to do. So yeah, lots of playing, and I am just going to keep pinching myself every day and trying to remind myself that this is now my life and feeling very lucky and very grateful.

S: What exciting times you have ahead of you! Thank you so much for spending time chatting to us.

A: Not at all. Thanks so much.

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