Anna Lapwood interview: One of a kind

I see the sparkly trousers (£3 from a charity shop) before I register who is wearing them. Then I clock the box of cupcakes, clutched by a pair of hands that I almost recognise from organ-playing videos on Twitter. As far as first impressions go, the initial five seconds of my encounter with organist, conductor, and broadcaster Anna Lapwood are good. When it transpires that the cupcakes are for us, I decide that Lapwood is my best interviewee yet. I take my dictaphone out of my bag and place it on the table between us.

My opening gambit, carefully prepared to show that I've done my research, is that Lapwood and I were both born in 1995 in Hertfordshire, ‘but that's where the similarities end’. Lapwood laughs – she wasn't born in Hertfordshire; the article I'd read that claims she was is wrong, although she does live there now. ‘I was born in High Wycombe,’ Lapwood confirms, before adding: ‘We are the same age, though!’

Born in Buckinghamshire, then, Lapwood spent a lot of her childhood learning to play an unusually large number of instruments, from the pennywhistle (‘I used to get very cross when people didn't see it as a proper instrument’) to the harp. This began, she says, because she ‘massively idolised’ her older brother, would watch him practising, and would sneak in and have a go when he wasn't looking. ‘I just kept taking up the instruments he would take up,’ says Lapwood. ‘But because I was so desperate to be like him, I would work really hard at them. He wasn't quite as good at practising, so I would end up overtaking him and he would then give up the instrument.’ After this had happened with four or five instruments, the siblings’ parents banned Anna from touching any brass instruments so that her brother could have the French horn – ‘which he still gave up after about two years’, she adds.

For her, however, there was no going back: ‘You just get a bit addicted to the process of transferring the skills from one instrument to another, so I just kept on absorbing more and more. I remember when I asked to take up the harp, my parents and teachers said that this had to stop.’ Lapwood would pick up most of the instruments in charity shops and would teach herself, so the financial cost wasn't the main barrier. ‘My teachers said, “You're already playing nine instruments – if you want to be a musician then you have to focus”. I think it's quite funny that at the age of 11, that was the message,’ says Lapwood. ‘If I'd listened to them, then I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you now.’

Anna Lapwood conducting at Pembroke College, Cambridge © NICK RUTTER

Trailblazer

Lapwood has since continued to go against the grain, becoming the first female organ scholar in Magdalen College Oxford's 560-year history, and then at the age of 21, becoming the youngest ever director of music at any Oxbridge college when she took up the role at Pembroke College, Cambridge. In applying for the scholarship, Lapwood was blissfully unaware of the significance of this, as the historic gender imbalance in the organ world – a combined result of boy choristers being the natural breeding ground for organists, and the few female organists ‘self-selecting’ themselves out of ‘top’ positions, Lapwood believes – was not really on her radar. ‘In a way, the beauty of it for me was that I had no idea what I was letting myself in for – I was coming from the total outside of that world,’ she says. ‘When the director of music at Magdalen said I should think about applying there, I didn't know what that meant, I didn't understand the connotations; I didn't realise I was going to be the first woman. I just thought, how nice – someone wants me.’

When, while still only 20, Lapwood interviewed for the position of director of music at Pembroke College – thinking there was ‘no way’ they were going to appoint her – she was offered the job on the day, which was ‘terrifying and amazingly exciting’. ‘I turned up [on my first day] thinking I knew an awful lot more than I did,’ she says, matter-of-factly, ‘and had to learn or relearn a lot of things, particularly about how to manage people.’ She adds, ‘It was a lot of trial and error, and I was very lucky that the group I had were okay with me experimenting; I feel like I've learnt so much from them in the last five years. I adore the Chapel Choir – they're such wonderful human beings.’

‘Frustrating’ discrepancy

In 2018, soon after starting in the position, Lapwood set up the Pembroke College Girls’ Choir, which brings together female singers from secondary schools around Cambridge and provides a ‘comprehensive music education’. The choir gives girls the opportunity to experience life as a chorister at a Cambridge college, with two weekly rehearsals and a Choral Evensong service. Although choristers have historically been male, this tradition is finally changing, and more and more cathedrals around the country are welcoming girls into their stalls. In recruiting singers for the choir, Lapwood aims for a 60/40 state/private split, which they ‘haven't really had that many issues achieving’. ‘The trouble with this in somewhere like Cambridge,’ says Lapwood, ‘is that state/private doesn't really mean anything. The state schools in Cambridge offer such incredible musical opportunities.’

Speaking about how she's seen singing in the choir ‘genuinely transform’ some of its members, Lapwood continues: ‘It makes me so cross that the opportunities are still only really there for the select few – it's chance, where you're born, and what opportunities you stumble across, whether you end up getting that life-changing opportunity or not. I just find the discrepancy of opportunity so frustrating.’

As part of their membership of the Pembroke College Chapel Choir, all of the singers also teach or lead workshops with young children. ‘I think it's a wonderful way for them to learn and give back,’ says Lapwood. ‘I have all these grand, ridiculous ideas about partnerships between, for example, university music programmes and schools. I would love to see that kind of thing become compulsory to try and facilitate a cheaper process.’ She adds: ‘But then I don't think it should be a cheap process – [access to music education] is something we should be investing money into.’

I ask Lapwood what changes she'd like to see within music education in England over the next five years. ‘If I could wave a magic wand, then it would be free music lessons for everyone and choirs in every school,’ she says. Magic isn't necessary in Scotland – the budget announced at the end of 2021 included £12m to remove instrumental tuition costs in Scottish schools. Here in England, though, this kind of financial commitment from the powers that be seems some way off.

Group singing in every school seems more attainable, although requires interest and support from headteachers, as well as potential financial investment depending on the school's current set-up. ‘I bang on about this the whole time,’ says Lapwood, ‘but every school should be doing singing with their kids. I feel that particularly strongly given the last two years.’ She talks anecdotally about noticing young people's attention spans reducing during the pandemic because of ‘constant overstimulation’, caused by ‘online teaching, flashing imagery, and often having two screens on the go at the same time’. ‘Some of the girls in my Girls’ Choir say that they can no longer watch a film because they don't have the attention span, so they just watch TV episodes; and some of the others said that they watch things in double speed.’

‘How are they going to read a book, or study for their exams?’ Lapwood asks. ‘Music, I feel, is the one thing that can actually reverse the process [of reduced attention span], because you can't concentrate on something else when you're trying to sing in tune with everyone else.’ This is also a concern for future concert audiences because, as Lapwood exclaims, ‘You can't put a concert on double speed!’

Anna Lapwood at Leeds Town Hall © TOM ABER

The future of classical music

When we speak, Lapwood has recently been appointed associate artist at the Royal Albert Hall, alongside saxophonist and presenter Jess Gillam, choreographer and filmmaker Corey Baker, and spoken-word performer LionHeart. Their appointments are part of the Royal Albert Hall's ‘wider push around innovation and diversity’, and it's hoped that the group's work will ‘increase young people's engagement with more traditional artforms’. One news story about Lapwood's appointment dubs her the ‘TikTok organist’, which, she tells me now, she doesn't like – ‘it's like when you're constantly referred to as a female organist. You're just an organist, but people like putting you in boxes.’

There's an element of truth in the ‘unfortunate’ nickname, though, as Lapwood is very active on social media. ‘This isn't something historically that the organ world has been particularly tapped into, but it's a huge part of who I am because I love sharing and I love bringing people along on that journey, because I think it's the best way for them to realise that the organ is quite a cool instrument.’ Having developed a ‘thick skin’ after initially fielding ‘mean and unfair’ criticism for ‘cheapening’ herself by using social media in the way that she does, Lapwood says that she uses it now because she both enjoys it and because it's a way of engaging with a new audience, especially in the case of TikTok.

‘It's quite new for me still, but I've been getting to know the platform and I've seen that there are millions of people on there who are genuinely interested in learning about random niches, and who just like people talking passionately about what they do.’ For anyone who is yet to be sucked in, TikTok is a short-form video based social media platform – it allows users to record, edit, caption and share content to potentially millions of viewers. ‘I ended up on “thatched roof TikTok” the other day,’ says Lapwood, ‘and got really into watching this guy talk about how to thatch a roof, which is not something I ever thought I was going to find interesting.’ She adds, in all seriousness: ‘It means that for something weird and niche like the organ, which has historically been a bit side-lined from mainstream classical music, people can get really sucked into it and start to ask questions.’

A 10-second video clip watched to pass the time may not seem like a convincing means of introducing young people to the organ, but as Lapwood says, ‘They might get sucked in by a “light” video or a video about film music or something like that, but then they watch Bach videos and start to learn more about the instrument and the repertoire, and then they come along to concerts. I just think it seems like the future of classical music.’ Like most social media platforms, TikTok uses algorithms to present you with content it thinks you'll be interested in based on your previous interactions – the more roof thatching you watch, the more roof thatching you're going to get.

Culture shift

Aside from their ages, a noticeable similarity between Lapwood, Gillam, and Sheku Kanneh-Mason, all MT cover stars this year, is the sense of responsibility they feel about paving a way and improving the industry for those even younger than themselves. For Lapwood, this particularly revolves around the representation of and opportunities for women and girls, although she is keen to stress that ‘we need to make sure that if we're offering more opportunities for girls, it's not taking anything away from boys’.

Lapwood is optimistic that a culture shift is already occurring in classical music, especially when it comes to repertoire. ‘It requires some of us to push pretty hard in order to make that change happen, but I think it has become totally normal for the next generation. It's quite funny; the girls in my Girls’ Choir just assume that most pieces are by women now,’ she adds, ‘even if the composer's name is Ben.’

Anna Lapwood's new album Celestial Dawn with Pembroke College Girls’ Choir is out on 8 July on Signum, and she is performing at Aldeburgh Festival on 23 and 25 June. annalapwood.co.uk