Zosia Herlihy-O'Brien: pipe dreams

As the violinist stepped onto the stage of the Auckland Town Hall for the dress rehearsal, the string section of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra behind her began the soft hazy trembling that opens Sibelius’s violin concerto.

Zosia Herlihy-O’Brien, then 15, was watching, transfixed. While she’d watched dress rehearsals before, this one was different. “It was demystified,” she says. “It wasn’t this concert persona coming to the stage.” And it wasn’t just the casual ‘hoodie and track pants’ attire of the violinist, Dutch star Janine Jansen, which broke down the walls for the young Zosia; it was the process.

As Janine lowered her bow, she stepped forward to consult with the conductor. Then they played the section again, then again. “They’d stop and change the most subtle things,” says Zosia. “You could see the machinations of how things were fitting together.”

A violinist herself, Zosia knew the concerto well. But now she could see how all the parts worked; how the different voices of the orchestra emerged and retreated. “I think I just got a glimpse into that world and thought, ‘I can do that too’.”

Zosia grew up in Glendowie, in east Auckland. Raised by parents with omnivorous music tastes, she can’t remember a time she wasn’t attuned to rhythm and pitch. When Zosia was a baby, her mum noticed her nodding her head in time to music; at three, Zosia pointed to a violinist on television and said, “I want to do that”. 

Zosia grew up in Glendowie, in east Auckland. Raised by parents with omnivorous music tastes, she can’t remember a time she wasn’t attuned to rhythm and pitch. When Zosia was a baby, her mum noticed her nodding her head in time to music; at three, Zosia pointed to a violinist on television and said, “I want to do that”.

What sets Zosia apart from other musical prodigies is that she’s never stopped adding other instruments and disciplines. While another student might have focused singularly on the violin, Zosia has since taken up the piano, harp, organ and conducting. Today, she directs choral groups, symphony orchestras and chamber ensembles. The best part is collaborating with others, she says, shaping the ‘journey’ of a concert, taking it beyond simply performance.

Most recently, though, Zosia’s attention has been on the organ. In December, she was named the inaugural organ scholar at London’s Royal Albert Hall, and she’s partway through her year studying under organist and classical-music celebrity Anna Lapwood.

Recently, Anna has become an unexpected social-media star: she posts videos on TikTok and Instagram of her performances on the world’s largest musical instruments.

“She reaches so many people,” says Zosia. “A lot of what she does, I really want to do. I want to communicate the organ and music to people who would not otherwise go and seek it out. And to be a woman, and a young woman, at the forefront of this is so important.”

Women remain vastly underrepresented as conductors and music directors – not to mention as organists. Zosia is also the resident organist at London’s Charterhouse; she’s only the second woman to hold the position in 700 years. (The last one was in 1884.)

The organ is not for the faint-hearted. The Royal Albert Hall’s instrument, nicknamed the ‘Voice of Jupiter’, has four keyboards, a pedalboard for the feet, 9,999 pipes and 147 stops, which allow the player to change the sound. As a result, the organ can imitate most of the instruments in the orchestra.

Zosia hadn’t played the organ before winning the spot of organ scholar at her Auckland high school, Baradene College of the Sacred Heart. From then on, she spent her lunchtimes in the chapel practising. Towards the end of her secondary education, a careers counsellor made a foolish attempt to redirect her into medicine or law. Zosia remembers slamming her hands down, saying, “I’m doing music” and leaving the meeting. It was a relief to reach the School of Music at the University of Auckland, she says, where she took a characteristically wide selection of classes.

She particularly loved a graduate-level paper on experimental music led by composer Associate Professor David Chisholm. Think setting pianos on fire, or ‘preparing’ them by tipping screws and bolts into the strings, changing the way they sound.

“I wouldn’t have thought to go seek this out, and I remember thinking, ‘Wow, there’s so much I can explore and discover’,” she says. “That was probably the most formative class at the University of Auckland that I took.” 

Zosia was also itching to try conducting, and she began studying the discipline under acclaimed choral conductor alumna Karen Grylls.

“She is one of the most inspiring wāhine in the creative field that I’ve had the pleasure of learning from. She just has so much music in her.”

Immersing herself in choral music and leading a choir were other new experiences.

“What I learned with her was that the whole choral world really translated into how you approach the string section of the symphony orchestra – and then, in turn, the other instruments.”

It led to a role as music director at St Mark’s in Remuera, arranging music for services – a position Zosia held until she left Auckland to pursue her Master of Music at the Royal Academy of Music in London. When she arrived in the UK, she immediately started a new chamber choir and then a string ensemble – the Woolf Quartet (named after their rehearsal quarters, which used to be one of Virginia Woolf’s London residences).

Ever since Janine Jansen walked onto that stage in trackpants, Zosia has been pondering authenticity, and how that relates to soloists’ stage persona. With the Woolf Quartet, she’s exploring how to make things less formal, less staged.

“That’s something we’re really trying to break down,” she says. “As a performer, you walk out on stage and there is that wall between performer and audience – that’s just the traditional, conventional concert setting.”

Inspired by radical violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Zosia began performing barefoot. In a recent improvisation session, she decided to find out if she could lie down on the floor while continuing to play. (Yes, but everyone thought it was weird.)

As well as touring the UK and Europe, the Woolf Quartet does community and outreach work, exploring how to make music more interactive. Their most recent audience? Very young children – the same age Zosia was when she first saw a violin.

“The whole point of that is that it’s not performer and audience; it’s all creating things together,” she says. “The kids will do something and we’ll react to it; we’ll go over to them and talk to them and play off what they give us. It’s so unpredictable, but it’s so much fun.”

– Rebekah White