ABOUT HISTORICAL PERFORMANCE AND THE GRAF-REGIER

​

As you may know and appreciate, at Staunton Music Festival, all music composed before 1850 is performed on period instruments (original and replica) by professional musicians highly trained in historical traditions of interpretation and style. Music from the past was not written with modern instruments in mind. While Bach, Mozart, and Schubert can sound fabulous on today’s instruments, the experience of hearing such repertoire on the historical instruments for which it was composed can be a revelation.

​

The name of Rod Regier is synonymous with the finest craftmanship in historic keyboard construction. Mr. Regier, an MIT graduate, has been constructing harpsichords and 18th and 19th century fortepianos from his workshop in Freeport, Maine for nearly 50 years. His fortepianos can be heard in the concert halls of numerous major American universities (Yale, Cornell, Stanford, Dartmouth, UNC-Chapel Hill, Indiana, Notre Dame, UC Berkeley, among others) and several of the most prestigious conservatories, from Juilliard and Peabody to the Sibelius Academy in Finland.

Get invested! You will be able to follow Mr. Regier’s progress on our website: from selecting the perfect pieces of wood, to the shaping of the case and creation of the soundboard, to the installation of the strings and keyboard mechanism. This will likely be Regier’s final large-scale piano, and as such it offers a fitting testimony to his lifetime of exemplary craftsmanship.