Brevard Music Center
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Brevard Music Center is a summer institute and festival located in western North Carolina. It enrolls about four hundred students, age fourteen and older, who participate in orchestra and other large ensembles, play chamber music, and take private lessons. A faculty of sixty is drawn from orchestras, conservatories, and universities from throughout the United States. The term runs from the last week of June through the first week of August. Three performance venues, including the 1800-seat Whittington-Pfohl Auditorium, host more than eighty public concerts that attract audiences of some 50,000 persons. With an annual budget of more than three million dollars, the Center contributes substantially to the economy of western North Carolina.
The Brevard Music Center began life in 1936 as a summer music camp for boys at Davidson College. The founder, Davidson faculty member James Christian Pfohl, led the program for seven years at Davidson and one season at Queens College in Charlotte, North Carolina. In 1944 Pfohl moved the program to its present location in Brevard, North Carolina, and he instituted a festival of concerts in 1945.
The name "Brevard Music Center" was adopted in 1955. Pfohl remained artistic director until 1964, when he was succeeded by Henry Janiec of Converse College. Janiec was succeeded in 1997 by conductor David Effron. Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart will assume the role of Artistic Advisor in fall, 2007.
The Brevard Music Center offers tuition in orchestral instruments, piano, composition, and opera. Two-thirds of the student body is college age or older, and all students live on the wooded campus of one hundred fifty acres. Active alumni include countertenor David Daniels, conductor Keith Lockhart, and violist Roberto Diaz, president of the Curtis Institute of Music.
