Why this popular British organist plays in the key of joy

Anna Lapwood’s rehearsals start at midnight. 

Several times a month, the 20-something millennial locks herself inside London’s Royal Albert Hall after audiences have gone home. Then she practices playing the venue’s mammoth pipe organ until dawn. It’s her opportunity to play loudly without disturbing anyone. 

Occasionally, a cleaner whistles along to her melodies. But at 1 a.m. on May 21, someone yelled out a request, Toccata and Fugue in D minor. She obliged by performing Bach. The heckler was a band member for the electronic musician known as Bonobo, who’d played the hall earlier that evening. One thing led to another and, the following night, Bonobo’s next concert at the venue climaxed with the surprise entrance of Ms. Lapwood’s organ. The audience roared in delight. In the following days, her cellphone video of the moment was viewed over 2.7 million times on TikTok.

“I still am getting people coming to my concerts who say that they’ve never been to a classical concert before ... but they saw that video of Bonobo,” marvels Ms. Lapwood in a Zoom interview. “And I just love that.”

Ms. Lapwood is one of classical music’s biggest breakout stars in years. She’s familiar to British television viewers as the host of the BBC Young Musician competition. But she first made her mark by being appointed director of music at Cambridge University’s Pembroke College at age 21. Since then she’s established the Pembroke College Girls’ Choir, which just released a Christmas album. A star on TikTok and Instagram, Ms. Lapwood challenges perceptions of the pipe organ as a fusty, old-fashioned instrument through her viral videos. The keys to her success? Talent, an exacting work ethic, and radiant enthusiasm.

“She brings enormous joy to her job,” says Amanda Holloway, a freelance journalist who writes for publications like BBC Music Magazine, in a Zoom call. “She shows that music doesn’t have to be dull or serious or difficult.”

When Ms. Lapwood was a teenager, she played harp in the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. She was also skilled at piano and violin. But when she first tried the pipe organ, it didn’t come naturally to her. 

“The emotional side of it is nowhere near as immediate,” says the musician. “If you play harder, it doesn’t get louder, right? It’s all about gradation of touch and articulation and the illusion of emotion and how you achieve that. ... I found it really hard. But because I didn’t like it, and because I found it hard, I was determined to tackle it.” 

During Ms. Lapwood’s final year of an organ scholarship at Oxford University, judges at a competition admonished her to “play more like a man.”

“I have no problem with someone telling you that you need power and authority,” she reflects. “I have a real issue with that being equated to gender.” 

In an effort to encourage young women to try their hand at the instrument, Ms. Lapwood founded the Cambridge Organ Experience for Girls. She also adopted a “tongue-in-cheek” hashtag on social media: #playlikeagirl. In one such TikTok video, she performs something akin to advanced yoga by lifting her foot onto the organ console to pull out the stops while her hands are busy. Ms. Lapwood’s videos exhibit her innate exuberance. When you “do the thing that you really, really, really love,” she says, “you kind of owe it to the world to be happy.” 

The musician adds, “If I’m having a bad day, I try to focus on brightening someone else’s day, and it almost always turns that around and makes my day better, too.” 

Ms. Lapwood also cultivates joy via annual visits to Zambia to teach in low-income communities. “I work with these phenomenal singers who learned from watching YouTube videos of Pavarotti,” she says. “[It’s] an exchange of ideas. I come back having learned so much about the importance of movement to how we sing.”  

Some of those ideas feed into her approach to conducting the Pembroke College Girls’ Choir. It’s a 24-voice group, ages 11 to 18, whose new release, “A Pembroke Christmas,” eschews commonplace singalongs like “Jingle Bells.” Indeed, the album, which also includes the Chapel Choir of Pembroke College, opens with an unconventional a cappella piece, “The Nine Orders of the Angels: II. Archangelus” by contemporary composer Patricia Van Ness.

“The singer we’ve got, Elsa, this incredible soprano, has such an expressive voice,” the conductor enthuses. “Just her singing solo chant is, for me, such an atmospheric thing and sets up a completely different world and prepares you for the experience for the album.”

The organist is similarly committed to diversifying the repertoire for organ. Her 2021 debut solo album, “Images,” features Debussy and Ravel but also modern composers such as Kerensa Briggs and Cheryl Frances-Hoad. 

“She’s not ashamed of playing big pieces that were written with the organ in mind, but are definitely not church music or big Bach pieces,” says Ms. Holloway, the classical music writer. “That’s how she gets to younger people.”

TikTok is another form of outreach. Ms. Lapwood’s videos include renditions of “The Simpsons” theme and a riff from AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck.” Those two in particular showcase the Royal Albert Hall organ’s 9,999 pipes, towering above her like a golden suspension bridge.

“It has the expressive capabilities of an entire orchestra, but manned by one person,” muses the organist. “It’s often used to mark the big moments in life: baptisms, weddings, funerals. ... But I think there’s also something to be said for trying to remind people that it doesn’t just live in a sacred context.”

As one of the venue’s associate artists, Ms. Lapwood seeks out opportunities to network with performers. That’s how she met Benedict Cumberbatch. 

In October, the “Sherlock” and “Doctor Strange” actor was performing as part of “Letters Live,” where historic pieces of correspondence are read. She offered him a tour of the organ; he performed a Bach fugue in C major. The actor asked her to close his next show with a Hans Zimmer composition from the movie “Interstellar.” “When Benedict Cumberbatch cried when I was playing, I found that really moving and humbling,” she says. “It was like, ‘Yes! This instrument can make people feel emotions.’” 

The musician relishes a full calendar, which, on April 1, 2023, includes a performance with the Pacific Symphony in Costa Mesa, California.  

“I tend to have a day about once a month where I will just sleep all day,” she says. “But I would prefer to make the most of the time I’ve got to make things a little bit more positive, even if it’s only in my little bubble.”