Joel Speerstra Receives Joan Benson Clavichord Award

Early Music America has awarded Joel Speerstra the 2025 Joan Benson Clavichord Award

A Graduate of Oberlin College and Conservatory (BA, BM) and the New England Conservatory of Music (MM), Joel Speerstra teaches and researches the organ and related keyboard instruments at the Academy of Music and Drama, University of Gothenburg. He is also active as an instrument builder, performer, and musicologist.

His doctoral project led to a reconstruction of the Gerstenberg pedal clavichord and a book published by Rochester University Press:Bach and the Pedal Clavichord: an Organist’s Guide. Through the Organ Research Workshop at the University of Gothenburg, he has led reconstructions of the mechanisms of numerous historical clavichords. His research on the pedal clavichord has been awarded a national prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, and in 2025, he was also elected a new member of the Academy. He is currently one of three principal investigators in the European Research Council-sponsored Synergy project REM@KE (reconstructing embodied musical knowledge at the keyboard), the first of its kind to be awarded to music research.

I write to accept – with genuine surprise and heartfelt gratitude to the committee – your nomination for the 2025 Joan Benson Clavichord Award. Although I never had the pleasure of meeting her myself, she was a close colleague of my mentor in Edinburgh, John Barnes, a guiding light to my generation, and one of the most important forces that shaped our enthusiasm for the instrument. I have always been grateful for her gifts as a performer and her enthusiastic and steadfast championship of the clavichord. 

– Joel Speerstra

The Joan Benson Clavichord Award is named for the distinguished keyboardist Joan Benson, who died on January 1, 2020. This annual award is given to a current outstanding American clavichord artist, teacher, researcher, composer, clavichord maker, or organizer of clavichord symposiums, master classes, or sessions for children. The intention is to show the significance of soft, tender tones through the clavichord. The awardee will have awakened a vivid appreciation for this keyboard instrument and shown its unique ability to express music through dynamic-rich, delicate, and highly nuanced sounds.