Joel Speerstra is a Lecturer in Performance at the Academy of Music and Drama at the University of Gothenburg where he is also a researcher and the publications director at the Göteborg Organ Art Center. He is active as an instrument builder, performer and musicologist. He studied the organ with William Porter and David Boe at Oberlin Conservatory before continuing in Europe on several grants that allowed him to study organ and clavichord with Harald Vogel as well as instrument building with John Barnes.

His doctoral project led to the reconstruction of the Gerstenberg pedal clavichord, and a book published in 2004 for Rochester University Press: “Bach and the Pedal Clavichord: An Organist’s Guide”.  He has given performances and presentations for the British, Boston and German Clavichord Societies and the international clavichord symposia in Magnano. Speerstra is also a regular member of the Organ Academiy in Gothenburg. His research on the pedal clavichord was recently awarded  with the 2012 national prize in musicology from the Swedish Academy of Music.