He was the first official BBC Staff Theatre Organist from 1936 to 1938, during which time he made 405 broadcasts on the organ at St George's Hall, Langham Place.
[1] 'Reggie' was a hugely popular broadcaster in his heyday in the late 1930s and 1940s in Britain and later settled in the United States, where he similarly enjoyed an illustrious career performing and recording.
[3] Foort's first performance on a Wurlitzer was at a theatre in Edinburgh,[2] and a few weeks later he took up a job as organist at the New Gallery Kinema, Regent Street, London, where in the late 1920s he passed what he described as 'one of the happiest periods of my life',[2] popularising the theatre organ as a 'one-man orchestra' through broadcasts and recordings of his performances on the cinema's F2/S Wurlitzer.
Touring back home in Europe, he was warmly received at the Jerusalemkirk in Denmark owing to a popular following from his radio broadcasts.
[3][6] He remained in the role of Staff Theatre Organist until 1938, continuing to make broadcasts for the BBC on a freelance basis.
In 1941, he loaned the mobile organ to the BBC, and for the next ten years travelled round the country, often by train, giving performances.
His warm and personable style, combined with his patriotism, were a boost to wartime morale, and he set himself a punishing schedule with the result that a decade later, in his words, "there was not a town or city anywhere in Great Britain that I had not visited".
[6][8] Having greatly enjoyed his 1935 visit to the US, when he played the organ of the Paramount Theatre in New York, Foort vowed to return to the States to live.
[6] Weighing 30 short tons (27 t), Foort's specially commissioned Möller organ had five manuals (keyboards), 27 ranks of pipes, 259 stops, over 100 pistons and controls, and percussion instruments.
The featured melodies, medleys and excerpts are by a wide range of composers of classical and light music, including Addinsell, Amers, Bizet, Brahms, Chopin, Coates, Delibes, Donaldson, Drigo, Friml, Green, Handel, Hanley-Mills, Harline, Joyce, Kahn-Woods, Ketelby, Kilmer-Rasbach, Klein-Dillon, Nevin, Orth, Purcell, Rombert, Rossini, Schubert, Simons-Marks, Sullivan, Suppé, Taylor-Fisher, Tobias-DeRose, Toselli, Wagner, Haydn Wood, Yradier and Zalva.