Anna Lapwood: The TikTok Organist Rewriting the Rules of Classical Music

When Anna Lapwood walked into London’s Royal Philharmonic Society Awards last winter, she left with a trophy that summed up her career so far: Gamechanger. Still only 28, she has already redrawn the map of classical music for a new generation — not only from the organ lofts of Cambridge chapels but also across the vast stage of social media.

A Disney fugue, a Chopin nocturne — on the organ

On the surface, Lapwood is director of music at Pembroke College, Cambridge. But listen closer, and you’ll find her turning the most traditional of instruments into something daringly modern. At a rehearsal in Suffolk’s Royal Hospital School, the chapel walls shook not with Bach but with a Disney soundtrack refashioned into a flamboyant organ toccata. Minutes later, she transformed Chopin’s Nocturne in E-flat into a piece cloaked in organ colors — at once haunting and playful.

This spirit of reinvention now fuels her forthcoming Sony Classical album Luna, which includes only two traditional organ works. “There are so many brilliant organists who play the classics better than I ever could,” she says. “What excites me is asking how something familiar — Debussy’s Clair de lune, or even a film score — can sound completely new on the organ.”

Lapwood’s experiments could have remained chapel secrets. Instead, she took them online, becoming what the internet has dubbed “the TikTok organist.” With over 700,000 followers and 21 million likes, she has brought the grandeur of the pipe organ to audiences scrolling on their phones.

For her, the strategy is simple: meet people where they are. “If young people are spending six hours a day on social media, why shouldn’t some of that time include classical music?” she asks. And the results speak for themselves: followers who first discovered her through Disney themes or film-score arrangements now turn up in person to hear Britten and beyond.

From harp prodigy to reluctant organist

Lapwood’s journey to the organ wasn’t straightforward. Born in Oxford, she grew up playing piano, violin, and especially harp, eventually joining the National Youth Orchestra as principal harpist. By her teens, she imagined a professional orchestral career. But when her mother suggested learning the organ at 14 — lured by the promise that Oxford and Cambridge organ scholars get grand pianos in their rooms — she reluctantly agreed.

“I hated it at first,” she admits. “The organ was the hardest instrument I had ever tried. But then I pushed myself to practise six to eight hours a day, and everything changed.” That determination carried her to an organ scholarship at Oxford’s Magdalen College and, at just 21, to the post of director of music at Pembroke College, Cambridge — the youngest ever appointed at Oxbridge.

A campaign for women and for music’s future

Lapwood’s energy extends beyond performance. At Pembroke, she founded a girls’ choir for teenagers and ensured that every service for a year included music by a woman composer. What began as an experiment has become habit: today her repertoire is evenly split between male and female composers.

She also speaks out about systemic inequalities — from the tiny percentage of women organ recitalists to the damaging cuts to arts funding. “We’re in a fight,” she says. “If we don’t defend classical music, it risks being squeezed out by stereotypes and ignorance.”

The next generation

For Lapwood, none of this is elitist. She flips the accusation back: “In sport, being elite is a badge of honor. Why shouldn’t it be the same in music? Elite musicians inspire the next generation — but only if they’re given the space and support to keep creating.”

It’s a philosophy that blends old and new, tradition and disruption. Whether arranging Chopin for organ or posting Disney fugues to TikTok, Lapwood isn’t chasing novelty for its own sake. She’s opening doors — into chapels, concert halls, and now phone screens — proving that classical music’s future may lie in its boldest rule-breakers.

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