Stories: When Trip Hop Meets Classical Organ

Often as an organist you’re working in a building that is busy and, often, a tourist destination such as the Royal Albert Hall. The organ is a relatively loud instrument, so they tend not to like me practising at full pelt when there are visitors in or when there’s a show on. So, the best slot for an organist to practise tends to be overnight between 11pm and 6am.

It’s funny, a lot of people say, oh you love practising in the middle of the night, don’t you? To which I say, if I had a choice, I would choose to practise in the daytime, thank you. It can be a bit hard work when you get to 4am in the morning as that’s when I start to flag, but if there’s a crew setting up in the hall for the next day, they often shout out requests and that gives me a boost of energy.

One night, this trip hop musician known as Bonobo and his band had just finished playing. I had just started practising and there was a massive screen behind me so I couldn’t see the arena, but I could hear the people on the stage. They started shouting up, ‘Play the Toccata in D minor’ so I did and we kind of had a little banter backwards and forwards. I eventually invited Bonobo and his band up and we had a lovely time chatting about the organ. Then he said, wouldn’t it be cool if we had organ in the show tomorrow? I was like, well I’m free, I’m in London, I could…

We exchanged numbers and when I finished practising at 6am I went home, had a couple of hours sleep, then had a call with Bonobo’s music director, and I turned up for a sound check at 1pm, saw the music the first time and they were like, just give it a go and see what happens!

In the past, if I’d been asked to do this kind of thing, I would have said no, I’m a classical musician. I’d have to see the music in advance, I wouldn’t improvise, I’d have to know what’s going on, but on this occasion, I wanted to see how it might work out.

When the show started, I remember standing by at the organ console and in the piece before the one I was playing in, the orchestra’s strings were soaring higher and higher and I literally sat there crying, I was like, what’s going on? I get emotional just thinking about it. I just had this moment of thinking, ‘Oh my God there is so much music you are so oblivious to,’ and I was so cross I had ignored it for so long.

I know we all talk about pivotal life moments, but this really was one for me. It felt like fireworks were going off, that I’d been on this road that had suddenly opened up. In the TikTok video I put up, you can sense that by the way I respond as the crowd goes nuts when the organ first comes in. I’ve NEVER heard a sound like that before.

About half an hour after I posted it, I already had something like 10,000 likes and that’s not normal. I texted Bonobo saying, this is going mad, and sure enough, my TikTok post ended up reaching millions. The loveliest thing about it from my point of view, is I still get people coming to my concerts who say they stumbled across me through that Bonobo video who have never listened to classical music before. I find that so exciting because I feel like that’s what we all hope will happen in the world of social media but when you actually see it happening, it’s amazing.

“I know we all talk about pivotal life moments, but this really was one for me. It felt like fireworks were going off, that I’d been on this road that had suddenly opened up.”

The Bonobo show acted as a kind of the catalyst for everything that has happened to me since, like exploring different ways of using the organ, and seeing how we can surprise audiences in person or online. I take myself slightly less seriously now. I used to get so scared when I performed and as a result, I had a very difficult relationship with performing. Doing that Bonobo concert, it was the first time I’d really explored a new genre, I mean I knew nothing about electronic music and probably went into that concert thinking, oh well, yes, it’ll be fun.