WILLIAMSBURG – A Steinway concert grand piano that once accompanied soprano Leontyne Price during a performance attended by world leaders at the 1983 G7 Economic Summit will be fully restored this summer at the Williamsburg Regional Library.
The 1972 Steinway Model CD, a longtime centerpiece of the Williamsburg Library Theatre, is being refurbished thanks to a $37,550 grant from the E.K. Sloane Fund of the Hampton Roads Community Foundation. Additional support for the project is coming from the Chamber Music Society of Williamsburg and a private donor.
During the 9th G7 Summit in Williamsburg, the White House borrowed the library’s piano for a special performance on the patio of the Williamsburg Inn, where it accompanied Price before leaders from France, West Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and Canada.
The instrument will be transported this summer to the workshop of master piano technician Terry Greene of Fine Piano in Zuni, Virginia. The restoration is expected to take about four months.
“This piano has served our community for more than four decades,” said Sandy Towers, director of the Williamsburg Regional Library. “It’s a rare thing for a library to own a piano of such quality, and we’re so grateful to the support of the Hampton Roads Community Foundation and others that is enabling our community to continue to enjoy and benefit from this impressive instrument.”
Robert Orgain, a security monitor at the library, was assigned as a military escort for Price during the G7 performance and now works alongside the same instrument.
“It’s just such a beautifully specific and unexpected story,” Towers said. “A little library like ours has a Steinway concert grand in the first place — and then it turns out it was used for one of the most historically significant moments in Williamsburg’s modern history, and one of our own staff members was there.”
