Faith Lanam, St. Ann Organist

At St. Ann Chapel we are greatly blessed to have Faith Lanam as our organist. Her artistry on the organ adds sacredness to the mass and inspires everyone who is present.

Faith Lanam is a musicologist, performer, pedagogue, and teaching fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research focuses on the music and women of El Colegio de San Miguel de Belem, Mexico’s first female music conservatory. She has collected and edited numerous musical manuscripts, performance scores, partbooks, and archival documents from el Archivo Historico del Colegio de San Ignacio de Loyola, Vizcaínas in Mexico City. Drawing on secondary sources in historical musicology, music education, and studies in colonialism and gender, Faith’s research increases our understanding of historically underrepresented foci in musicology, specifically eighteenth-century music pedagogy and the professional training of female musicians, within the greater context of the musical and social life of colonial Mexico City.

Faith is from rural Ohio and began to learn to play the organ at the Lutheran church where her great-grandmother served as organist. She is an active performer on percussion, early keyboards, and organ, collaborating often with tenor Joshua Lanam. She holds a bachelor of music in music education and percussion performance from the Conservatory of Music at Capital University (Columbus, Ohio) and a master of music in musicology from the University of Leeds (West Yorkshire, England). She completed her PhD at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she also works as a teaching fellow.

Having moved from the United Kingdom, Faith has lived in the Bay Area for six years. She enjoys kayaking in Monterey Bay, traveling, collecting art from local artists, and spoiling her two poodles, Chaucer and Brontë.