“She had rightly become “the world’s most visible organist”” - New York Times
An organist, conductor, broadcaster, and the Director of Music at Pembroke College, Anna Lapwood is a woman of many talents. Born in 1995 at High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, she studied the piano, violin, viola, and composition at the Junior Royal Academy of Music, and was the principal harpist for the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and the Junior Academy Symphony Orchestra. Over time, she gravitated towards the organ, gaining a first-class degree from Magdalen College, Oxford, and becoming the first woman in the college's 560-year history to be awarded an organ scholarship. In 2016, she was appointed the Director of Music of Pembroke College, Cambridge, the youngest person to hold the position of Director of Music at an Oxford or Cambridge university college. In 2024, Anna was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to music.
Having spent some years being encouraged to “play like a man”, Anna is an avid supporter of girls and women in music. In 2018, she founded the Pembroke College Girls’ Choir for girls from local schools and also runs the Cambridge Organ Experience for Girls, an organ workshop for players across the UK every year. She has commissioned features in her recitals across Europe and North America, and “Gregoriana”, an anthology of 12 new organ pieces she curated, is made by female composers. She is also a strong advocate for music education as a whole, and is dedicated to bringing music to children of all backgrounds, organizing events like her annual 24-hour ‘Bachathon’ to raise money for musicians in Zambia, for example.
Learn more about her:
Text by: Ambrose Cheung/Licha Stelaus Productions
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