About the Brevard Music Center

Imagine a place where music fills the air. Where Beethoven, Mozart, and Verdi are alive and well. Where the most talented students and extraordinary faculty coexist in practice rooms and onstage. Now imagine it all in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina.

Step out of your dream and experience Brevard Music Center—at once a place, an institute, and a festival.

Situated on a lovely wooded 180-acre campus in western North Carolina, Brevard Music Center stands as one of this country's premier summer training programs and festivals. Under the artistic direction of acclaimed conductor Keith Lockhart, Conductor of the Boston Pops and formerly Chief Conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra in London, over 700 gifted students and participants come to the Music Center each summer to study with distinguished faculty and renowned guest artists. From June through August, students participate in a rigorous program of instruction and performance including orchestral ensembles, private lessons, chamber music, opera, classical guitar, bluegrass, and jazz. Primary BMC performance venues include the 1800-seat, open-air Whittington-Pfohl Auditorium and the new 400-seat Parker Concert Hall.

Brevard's hallmark is the powerful sense of community that re-emerges every June as faculty and students work together to present over 100 performances and events, encompassing multiple music genres, to more than 40,000 enthusiastic fans from across the country. Over the past 85+ years, BMC has been privileged to welcome world-class soloists including Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, Frederica Von Stade, Conrad Tao, Johannes Moser, Olga Kern, Garrick Ohlsson, and other talented virtuosi.

The summer festival also features the popular BMC Presents series, having brought non-classical artists as rich and diverse as Steep Canyon Rangers, Amy Grant, Béla Fleck, Bryan Sutton, Lyle Lovett, The Manhattan Transfer, Garrison Keillor, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Marvin Hamlisch, Peter, Paul and Mary, PDQ Bach, Judy Collins, and Michael Feinstein to the Brevard stage.

For opera lovers, Brevard Music Center's Janiec Opera Company presents fully-staged operas and other operatic showcases each summer festival season. Past performances have included classic operas such as Rigoletto, Così fan tutte, Madama Butterfly, Don Giovanni, Carmen, and La bohème, as well as more modern works like Street Scene, The Ballad of Baby Doe, Albert Herring, Sweeney Todd, and the world premiere of Falling Angel.

Nearly half of the Summer Festival concerts are free and open to the public. Ticketed events start at $24.

Music-lovers are welcome to bring their own food and beverages for a pre-concert picnic on the lawn or purchase delectable treats on campus.

For decades the Brevard Music Center has inspired devotion not only among its students and faculty but also among its listeners and among a vast corps of volunteers. That hundreds of persons have purchased homes in western North Carolina expressly to be near the Brevard Music Center gives some measure of the Center's significance to its community.

We invite you to experience the music and magic of Brevard Music Center. On the lawn, under the stars, or in an intimate hall, this is the place to witness performances as captivating as the view.