Joyce Johnson Robinson is a past editor of The Diapason.
In late 2024 I was able to catch up with Amanda Mole, one of The Diapason’s 20 under 30 Class of 2016, when she came to the Chicago area to present a recital and lead a masterclass. It was a pleasure to learn the details of how Amanda’s desire to become a musician developed, the challenges of competitions, and how to deal with pressure.
Following studies with Larry Schipull and Patricia Snyder, Amanda earned her degrees: Bachelor of Music in organ performance with honors at the Eastman School of Music, Rochester, New York, studying with William Porter; and Master of Music at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, New Haven, Connecticut, studying with Martin Jean. In May 2025 she completed a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at Eastman, studying with David Higgs, with a minor in choral conducting. Her numerous competition wins include the Arthur Poister Organ Competition and John Rodland Memorial Organ Competition (2014), Miami International Organ Competition (2016), and Eighth International Musashino-Tokyo Organ Competition (2017). She has been featured on the radio show Pipedreams (nine times as of this writing), performed at the 2015 New Haven regional American Guild of Organists convention, the 2016 and 2018 Organ Historical Society conventions, and AGO National Organ Fest in 2020. In 2022 she performed at the AGO national convention in Seattle, premiering two works there. Her recordings include a CD released in 2019 on the Naxos label and a CD of music for trombone and organ with trombonist Lisa Albrecht and the Hohenfels Trombone Quartet in 2020. Amanda Mole is represented in North America by Karen McFarlane Artists, Inc.
(concertorganists.com).
What is your current work situation?
I am the visiting lecturer of organ and university organist at Cornell University, filling in for Annette Richards while she is on sabbatical this year. The rest of my income comes from playing concerts in the United States and Europe. I’m doing quite a bit of substituting both as an organist and as a singer in Rochester—sometimes even as a harpsichordist, interestingly! There’s a lot going on in Rochester as far as music goes, so plenty of chances to gig and things like that, but my main work is giving recitals.
Tell us a bit about your family background.
I am an only child. My parents, who retired, were professors of biochemistry at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center at Worcester. They taught medical students, but mainly they did research. I found out recently that they worked with proteins, and my mom worked specifically with the protein portion of the amyloid plaque that is laid down when Alzheimer’s disease occurs in the brain. My dad contributed significantly to cardiovascular science. They had me after they established their careers. I was a somewhat high-energy kid for two older parents; and I think I was a bit of a handful!
How did you get started in music?
My mom sings, and she played in a bell choir, but it was mostly a hobby to everything else she did. Growing up, I went to church all the time with her. I grew up American Baptist, and so I heard the organ and the choir, and she would take me with her to choir rehearsal. I was always full of energy and would run around. When I was five, I had expressed interest in taking lessons in something—piano, ballet, gymnastics. I really liked hobbies such as music and dance, but I wasn’t much interested in sports.
My parents gave me a choice between piano or dance, but I had to choose one and stick with it. I chose piano. I’d like to disclose that I had the same focus issues that every five-year-old has; it was hard to get me to practice. I teach a lot now, and one of the challenges for parents is that they don’t expect it’s going to be a tricky journey in getting their child to practice. The first few years, that’s all you’re doing. My mom had this little egg timer. I had to practice for five minutes, and then it would go off and I could do something else. I had to do this three times a day, practice at least fifteen minutes a day. There were times when I loved it, and the time flew by; and there were times when I hated it, and I wanted to be outside and playing with my friends. But because my mom was so insistent and consistent with me, I kept practicing. I learned that skill, so that when I was finally interested in something—not playing “Hot Cross Buns” anymore, but actually playing a song that I liked—it was so easy to sit and practice; I would work on it, and getting that sense of accomplishment felt really good. Of course, with kids you have to sit with them and teach them that they can have this sense of accomplishment and that they are capable. Maybe that’s the biggest hurdle to overcome.
By middle school it became clear that I had a knack for music and I was getting into Beethoven sonatas and such. In high school I was a year younger than everyone in my grade, which was not fun, because it made me not cool. All my friends could have a job, drive, and go to R-rated movies—and I had a year to go. So I watched all my friends get their first jobs, at age sixteen in Massachusetts when you could work, and they were all excited that they were going to make money. It was only a couple of months before I watched them get extremely deflated, because high school kids get the lowest paid and least desirable jobs. They would be in customer service, a lot of them, and they’d be treated badly by people.
I didn’t want to do that. My mom suggested I take organ lessons, and I said yes. That way I could sub and make—I remember the magic number was $150, subbing at one service at my church, while my friends were making minimum wage; they would struggle to make $150.
I remember starting to study with a woman, Arlette Grubbs, who unfortunately passed away only a couple years after I started taking lessons with her. My first hymn was Schönster Herr Jesu, and I remember struggling through that; it was so hard not to play the pedal in the left hand. I remember my mom saying, “You must practice your fifteen minutes a day.” Organ was harder, and I was older, so it was an hour a day. But I had that instilled in me already, so I would go to the church, practice an hour a day, and then I would go the next day, and it would sound a little less bad, and eventually it started sounding better.
My senior year I was a bit more serious; I started taking lessons with an amazing teacher, Trisha Snyder, at Pakachoag Church in Auburn, Massachusetts, on a gorgeous Dobson organ. I had gotten very excited about playing a piece for piano on just the pedals—it was “Solfeggietto” by C. P. E. Bach—and I remember working to transcribe it from memory. I did finally succeed at it, but it was tricky. I thought it sounded so cool. And Trisha started assigning me bigger repertoire—a couple of the Bach Little Preludes and Fugues, and then the Bach G-minor Fantasy and Fugue, Vierne Carillon de Westminster—and the Guilmant First Sonata “Final.” I launched into those pretty quickly, and I ate it up.
You were still in high school at this point.
Yes, in my senior year I remember applying to colleges, for going into the medical field, and saying to my parents, “I truly want to major in the organ.” My scientist parents were surprised. They really supported me from the get-go, because they saw that I wanted to do this so badly, even though they knew money is always going to be a struggle in the arts. However, there are options—there are churches, teaching positions, concerts, there are things that organists can do to make a living. It was quite clear how much I loved it; I couldn’t ignore that.
Quite honestly, I was much better at medicine, and it came naturally to me. I’m very good at memorizing and eating large amounts of information in list form. I’m good at numbers. But organ wasn’t so easy. It was just something that I loved. Being able to express myself up there in front of everyone, to bear your soul to people and be vulnerable, to have practiced and still something goes wrong in a performance, that was very difficult.
I went to study for a couple of years with Larry Schipull, who’s a great teacher, at Mount Holyoke, in western Massachusetts. Larry gave me lots of diverse opportunities, and the organs were absolutely fantastic. It was very valuable, being able to learn so much from him, but there weren’t many organ students for me to get to know as colleagues and friends.
I decided to apply to a conservatory as a transfer student, so I could also have colleagues and form friendships with organists my age. I wanted to know what my colleagues were up to; I wanted to learn from them, too; and I wanted to connect with peers who shared my interests.
I transferred to Eastman. At Mount Holyoke, I got really serious—practicing eight to ten hours a day. When I got to Eastman, it easily upped to every possible moment that I could get. You can’t practice as much as you want, and I would say during my undergraduate studies, I aimed for six to eight hours a day of practice. Some days I was lucky enough to get eight or ten hours a day. I wouldn’t say it was the most focused practice, however! To be able to practice that much was also a luxury that I now cannot afford. I need to be smart with my practice; I have to be focused, intentional, and succinct. After three hours of very good practice, I feel exhausted and revitalized when I practice efficiently. In other words, I get more done in a shorter amount of time. I do admire the tenacity of my younger self, however!
Your career trajectory was launched through competitions, beginning with the Arthur Poister Organ Competition in 2014. With your level of skill and experience, what was the hardest part for you in participating in these competitions?
The hardest part for me was getting in the right headspace for them, because the competition is fierce. There’s a feeling of everything riding on this. Never have I heard a higher level of playing, as consistently, as I did in competitions, and pressure was put on from all sides. So you are forced to play at your absolute best level, which is a great thing to experience—once you do that enough times, you can do everything. A lot of concert organists have between four and six hours of music that’s always in our fingers at a high level, and that is very difficult to do, but even more difficult is learning an hour and a half to three hours of brand-new music and then playing it at that level, which is what competitions are. A lot of them have a prescribed repertoire list, and very often it’s pieces that aren’t as familiar but are wonderful, or that you don’t play. If you’re lucky enough you get to play some pieces you know, or you get some free choice in the competition, but you must bring it to that highest level in a short amount of time.
Another challenge is having so little time on the competition organ. This is just the nature of competitions. You all play the same organ, and there are sixteen of you, sometimes twenty, and how are they going to fit everybody in? One hour a day, one and a half hours, two hours tops over two days. And then, of course, breaks for the registrants so they can eat and do things that normal humans need to do.
I’ll never forget a couple of international competitions. We were all playing on the same instrument, and we all had an hour and a half of time allotted. I can’t remember exactly, but I believe at least one of them allotted an hour to set up your whole thirty-five-minute round, and then warm-up time the day of. That’s really tough.
I remember getting to an organ for the first time once, and all the expression pedals were backwards—open was in (down) and closed was out (up). And I was playing Liszt’s Orpheus. So I had to write in all my dynamics backwards, because I couldn’t remember in the short amount of time we had. I was also playing the bulk of L’Ascension in that round, and “Alleluias sereins” is difficult to register in a short amount of time, but when you have Liszt Orpheus on—to register those two, and get used to playing “Transports de joie” in an hour, I didn’t get to play through any of my repertoire. My first time playing through the repertoire was in the round.
These circumstances put extra pressure on the performer, but you learn to be very resourceful with your time, and the best way to practice for this, if you know it’s coming up, is going around from organ to organ and registering all these pieces again and again on different instruments. Certainly I play at venues where practice time is tight, or where practice time has to be in the night, or in the early hours of the morning, because venues are booked up, especially concert halls. I’ve never encountered another situation where I’ve had so little time as I did in competitions, so playing concerts kind of feels like a luxury in that way.
When I went to Tokyo, I would say I felt very prepared. When I wasn’t practicing, I took the opportunity to go to the owl cafes, and to see Harajuku and all the anime characters dressed up; I went to the Meiji shrine and saw weddings there; I went to Shibuya and tried different foods. I just enjoyed Japan for what it was. I was able to call a friend who had gone through the circuit before, who had also won Tokyo, and talked to him, because I was getting very nervous about it. And he said, “You’ve got this. You know the repertoire. Don’t worry about it.” I think that was one of my biggest hurdles; others might say the organ, or the repertoire, or the limited practice time, but I could deal with all those things as long as I wasn’t super self-doubting. It is amazing how that reflects in your playing. You can come as prepared as possible, and something can still go wrong if you’re nervous enough.
When you played a recital here recently, you had a little incident with your shoe coming off, and I thought, “Now there’s somebody who knows how to handle what comes along.” It didn’t get in your way at all. Has anything like that ever happened before?
Things like that have happened before. I’ve tripped going on stage. I had never tripped on stage before. My teacher was attending a concert that I was playing, and right beforehand he said, “Now don’t trip” as a joke. What did I do, but I tripped, and I broke my heel! I was playing the Duruflé Prelude and Fugue on the Name of Alain. Many of the other things I could play with all toes—the Liszt B-A-C-H, and I think Bach D Major, but I was pretty nervous, having never played with a broken heel before! It went fine, but I’ve had a few little incidents like that come up, and you never know. But I love what I do, I love playing concerts more than anything in the world, and I’m just having fun up there, so when something like that happens, it’s kind of funny, and I just go with the flow.
Another thing happened when I was in Indianapolis. There were chimes that were sounding exactly on E as I started the Rheinberger “Passacaglia” in E minor from Sonata VIII, and they were striking on every downbeat. I was making a video recording of this concert, and I wasn’t facing the audience—thankfully. But I lost it at one point, and in the video I could not stop laughing, because it was just perfectly timed, and I didn’t know that that was going to happen beforehand. It was just so funny how these things happen in concerts. So I think you must take it as it comes; I am a performer—that’s what I do, that’s what my personality is. I feel like I truly fit in this profession in that way; I like connecting with people through music. It’s good to roll with the punches—because you need to do that when you pursue music professionally. You can write a paper or a lab report, you can improve it and improve it, and after a while you submit it, and it’s the best it can be in that moment. You walk into a performance and can be as prepared as possible, and something still happens. So you should be open to that and be willing to roll with the curveballs.
What do you do to cultivate your creativity and imagination?
I like that question a lot. My mom was an artist before she was a biochemist. She painted. She had me take all these art classes. When I was a little kid, I learned origami, watercolor, worked with papier-mâché and tissue paper, and went to painting classes and such. I got some of that creativity from her, and my fierce independence, too, from both my parents. One of the things that has forced me to be creative is the discomfort of knowing things won’t always go to plan in a performing career—this is very different from science, where I felt that I could put everything in its little slot—and I knew how exactly to get a perfect score on an assignment. It’s not that way with music. You have to let that go—which fosters creativity, because you start thinking outside the box more and problem solving more, analyzing more critically. Being thrown into performance was one of the things that helped me swim instead of sink. It really helped that I was given a lot of opportunities to just be a normal kid. I went to public school, where I learned the social skills that I needed to learn, and that didn’t come so easily to me as an only child. I learned how to be creative there—in talking to people, relating to people, conversations, which seems so basic but is so hard when it’s just you growing up. I was also encouraged to have hobbies.
For a while I did nothing but the organ, and somebody suggested to me, when I was deep in competition mode, “Why don’t you think about a hobby?” I said I didn’t have time for hobbies, I was practicing all the time and couldn’t afford the luxury.
This person said that it’s very important that if things don’t go as planned in a competition or a recital or any performance, that you not feel like it completely breaks you as a human. Once I started having other things in my life that identified me, I found that I had much more perseverance for performance. I was able to pick up from what I saw as a professional failure and move directly through it and on to the next performance. That is what I attribute my success to, not the competitions that I’ve won, but the ones that I’ve lost. Because persisting after you feel so defeated, after something maybe even feels so unfair, keeping going through that and giving it your all is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. In the meantime, developing hobbies and other things that identify you uses a different part of your brain. It helps that part of your brain that you need for performing at a high level. Take a break. Take a little vacation so you come back to things and you’re much more fresh. At first it just started out with revisiting a TV show that I was into in my childhood; then I started crocheting, baking a little bit, and eventually I got into running. Running now has been a way that I’ve been able to make friends outside of music and also show them, “Hey, I do this kind of esoteric thing, and this is very cool. Why don’t you come to a concert sometime?” And they do.
Having all those other things that define me, I think, makes it easier to have confidence in yourself when you get up on stage—and confidence is key. When you get up there playing and believing in what you play, that is so important in order to communicate with your audience. That’s something I’ve learned here in my doctorate; I would even say that’s the main lesson I’ve learned. I think keeping a well-rounded life while still being very serious about what I do and keeping focused is key to my creativity and key to successful performances. Things like crocheting and running and baking, too, they also involve a certain amount of problem solving and being creative—you miss a stitch or you take a wrong turn on a run, and you’re trying to run a certain distance; or you use salt instead of sugar in a recipe—you must figure out how to get around those things.
The more you exercise that problem-solving muscle, I think the better you are in real time, when you must simply do it. Therefore, when something goes wrong in a performance, thinking of how to solve this problem the most smoothly and the most efficiently is someplace my brain goes. It goes beyond just instinct or panic. Actually, I get really cerebral up there, and strategic. So I think that’s a real key to being able to be creative and successful.
What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever gotten?
That one’s hard. I’ve had great teachers and mentors—all of them have had such good advice.
One of the most life-changing pieces of advice I received was during my doctorate with David Higgs. He said, “Believe in yourself, and others will believe in you. Whatever you have to say, say it with confidence.” This is something that didn’t come naturally to me, and it hadn’t been a lesson I had learned before that point in time. It was quite uncomfortable at first, to assert myself in this way. With practice, however, anything is possible. This piece of advice has played a huge role in my character development.
Some things are small—I remember David saying, “Make sure you look before you hit a piston, because it’s the looking that is the hard part, not hitting the piston.” I had this realization of “Wow, that’s it!” And I practiced in a completely different way from then on. It’s a small thing, but it stuck with me.
A good piece of advice is one that Bill Porter said to me and many others, “Just work as hard as you possibly can, and try not to worry.” If I had to be very succinct, in having a life motto, I would say that would be it—working as hard as you possibly can, and not wasting your energy on worrying. Over the years, many people have told me, “Believe in yourself,” since for me that was the big struggle, and that is very good advice, because if you believe in yourself, it can get you really far. If you believe in yourself, other people do, too.
What inspires you?
What inspires me is there are so many people in this field that I know who are not only great performers but they’re great people. I personally have so much respect for people who are so talented and also extremely nice, caring, empathetic, passionate people. I see that a lot; I remember going to play at the Seattle AGO convention in Benaroya Hall, and I was opening with Dupré Prelude and Fugue in B Major. I was scared out of my mind, because I was opening the final concert and playing a piece that everybody knew, and that probably a lot of people in that audience played. I was physically jumping up and down behind the door, I remember, to try to burn off some of that nervous energy, to try and dilute it a bit, and I played it.
I remember getting up and people just erupting in cheering and applause, and feeling so much warmth and support in that room. I had no reason to be nervous. This community is a very supportive one—the moment I got up and I actually heard that good energy in the room, I felt supported. People were excited to be there, because they wanted to hear me play and to hear these pieces and this organ, and not for any other reason. I didn’t feel the audience wanted me to mess up. I didn’t feel like anybody was there to hear me fail. I felt like everyone was there to hear me succeed. That was very inspiring,
On the other hand, it’s wonderfully rewarding to see my colleagues have so much success and not be corrupted by it. It can be so easy to let it get to your head. To stay humble and to be kind to others is something I hold in the highest regard—I think even more than a great performance. I can think of so many people in this profession—too many people to name—who are like that, and who hold on to their integrity, stay humble, and also work hard and are incredible musicians. I find them inspiring.
What are some of your favorite pieces?
One of the pieces that got me into playing the organ and that I heard for the first time, I believe, was at All Saints in Worcester, or it might have been Wesley Methodist, and it was Thomas Trotter—he played the Reubke sonata. I really heard something in that performance. I was this kid, sixteen at the time, with bleached blond hair, interested in Abercrombie & Fitch, talking on the phone with my friends for seven hours a day, and listening to rap albums—and to come in and hear a twenty-five minute piece on the organ and then get hooked, you know it’s got to be good, right? The performance was astounding. He also played “Flight of the Bumblebee” on the pedals, which was impressive, but what stuck with me was Reubke. That has always been one of my favorite pieces.
There’s plenty of repertoire I love, from every country and time period, but the eras that speak to me the most are German Romantic and German Baroque. I love Sweelinck, Buxtehude, and Bruhns. I do play French, English, and American music, all good things, on all kinds of organs, and there’s a special place in my heart for piston pushing and playing Skinner organs, because it was one of the first things I learned how to do. I love German Romantic music. The Ritter sonatas are fantastic; I love Liszt, Mendelssohn, Rheinberger, and Reger. As far as specific pieces, Reubke; Sweelinck has a Ricercar that is really something else. It’s like the Chromatic Fantasy but it’s harder and more unconventional in its subject. And, of course, Bach—Allein Gott, BWV 664, is one of my favorite pieces; I’ll never get sick of it. Those are among some of my absolute favorite pieces.
Right now you are the consummate performer. What do you aspire to for the future?
What I love doing is playing concerts. I also love teaching; I’ve been teaching well over half my life. My parents are both retired—as research scientists and professors at a medical school, a lot of what they did was teaching. When I had questions, I would see how they would teach, and I would pick up these little pedagogical nuggets from them. I think the first time I taught piano students professionally, I was fifteen. I was paid to tutor all through high school, from kids in my class and younger to adults who were in community college programs. Usually wherever I go, I end up with some sort of studio, whether it’s private or through the universities I’ve attended (Eastman or Yale). So that’s another big passion of mine. However, teaching positions are pretty few and far between, so I try to keep an open mind about that.
I also love choral music. I have done extensive study in choral conducting and spent a lot of time in choirs. I’m part of a choir now. I spend time singing and helping friends when they need a section leader. Choral music is a big passion of mine, and when I’m letting loose, I would say that my exercise playlist—my running playlist—is a big mess of 1990s and 2000s rap, and also Bach cantatas.
I also love early twentieth-century English repertoire—like a good Parry anthem; I get excited about those things. But the life of a choral conductor wouldn’t be for me—being in rehearsal for hours a day, and being “on” and inspiring, and at the center of attention all day long, and then also on my email all night. I like practice time, to be able to spend time with my instrument and perfect whatever passage I’m working on. I like the physical feeling of having all that practice time. So that’s a big passion where I could see myself in a church as well.
It’s tricky to balance this life as a musician, right? If you’re working for a church, it’s harder to travel to play concerts on the weekends, and if you’re at an academic position, it’s easier, and of course the summers, you have a little bit more time in both positions to do other things and make other plans—plan ahead in your jobs, and things like that. I love teaching, and I love church music. I love working with choirs and with students—I feel I have many opportunities to be happy and to contribute positively to the world. I can see myself in a variety of places—it depends what opens up and what’s available where I want to live, and what I want to do. We’ll just see the opportunities as they come.
Thank you, Amanda!
Amanda Mole’s website: amandamole.com.
