Sigal Music Museum

08/19/2026

Great music stands on centuries of innovation, craftsmanship, and passion. At Sigal Music Museum, you'll get up close with rare instruments spanning generations, each one a piece of the story that shaped the music we love today. Whether you're a musician looking for your next spark or just curious about how sound has evolved through the ages, there's something here to move you.

Need inspiration? We have centuries of it. Greenville, SC is home to a world-class collection of historic musical instruments (including Queen Charlotte's harpsichord) — with special exhibitions, live music concerts, lectures, teas and more. Come explore our music museum, and be inspired!

08/13/2026

We've got another big concert coming up at Hotel Hartness - a solo show by Dom Flemons of the Carolina Chocolate Drops on Sept 3rd. Tickets are going fast. Do you have yours yet? Link in comments.

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

08/10/2026

There's so much to see in South Carolina!

Summer in South Carolina doesn't always mean being outside.

Sometimes the best adventures happen to have some strong A/C.

If you're looking for a way to beat the heat, we've rounded up a few indoor attractions that are worth adding to your summer plans. The real question is, which one are you visiting first?

South Carolina Aquarium South Carolina State Museum McLeod Farms Sigal Music Museum

08/08/2026

Sigal Music Museum Collection Highlights
Charles Trute square piano, 1781

Sigal was fortunate in 2024 to acquire several important donations, including this early square piano made by Charles Trute in London in the early 1780s, and donated by the Warburg family of Connecticut. It is a four and one-half octave piano designed to be portable and allow the piano to be easily taken into the garden or even deeper into nature.

In the last two decades of the eighteenth-century, a movement towards ‘back to nature’ rose up that encouraged well-to-do people to reconnect with their natural surroundings, and makers in England and Scotland in particular brought out square, grand, and even upright pianos small enough to travel inside a coach, or be taken out of the house.

Sigal has several examples of these types of pianos in the collection. Some traveling pianos had folding legs, as found on one of the surviving Trute instruments from that time. There were even pianos made so small as to allow them sit one the players lap, as with the Louis Verel piano of 1783, formerly in the C**t Clavier Collection in Bethersden UK, and now in the Sigal collection.

08/07/2026

Join us tomorrow from 10AM-1PM as Sigal Music Museum takes part in the Spinx Market Live Arts Fair. This vibrant outdoor event showcases live arts organizations from across South Carolina and is part of the South Carolina New Play Festival. We'll be easy to find. Our tent will be right in front of Falls Cottage.

SPINX MARKET LIVE ARTS FAIR Saturday, August 8, 10am-1pm Greenville Downtown Main Street Near Spinx Market Join us Saturday morning as we bring the energy of the festival to Main Street with our Spinx Market Live Arts Fair — a vibrant outdoor event showcasing live arts organizations from across S...

08/06/2026

Sigal Music Museum Collection Highlights
1770 Zumpe square piano

When John Zumpe introduced his concept for a small piano in the form of a clavichord to London in 1766, he could hardly have imagined the impact this invention would have on the musical world. While the voice of the earliest Zumpe pianos is small and pinpoint-like, it was relatively inexpensive, provided a new world of color and musical imagination to the everyday buyer, and created a demand for music for the piano. While today we celebrate the fortepianos used by Mozart and early Beethoven, it was actually these small square pianos and their increasingly larger sisters that moved music into a new direction. Zumpe partnered with Gabriel Buntebart from 1768 to 1777, and this piano is from that partnership.

The 1770 Zumpe at Sigal shows the Zumpe piano while still in its infancy in terms of size and musical tone, but it is a fine small instrument on its own right. Such Zumpe pianos marked the beginning of pianos in America when David Propert brought one for sale in 1770 New York, and provided the colonies with their first glimpse of this new instrument. Marlowe Sigal bought the one in the Sigal collection in 1977 at a London auction. It joins two others in the Sigal holdings, one which has been partially converted into a clavichord at some point. It has no pedals, but two hand stops control the upper and lower dampers, while a third can be used to apply the ‘buff’ stop for a short sustain sound.