The Brevard Music Center is a summer institute and festival located in western North Carolina. North Carolina ( is a state located on the Atlantic Seaboard in the southeastern United States It enrolls about four hundred students, age fourteen and older, who participate in orchestra and other large ensembles, play chamber music, study composition, 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. Davidson College is a private liberal arts college for 1700 students in Davidson, North Carolina, in the United States. 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. Brevard is a city in Transylvania County, North Carolina, United States.
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. Converse Musicjpg|frame|right|Converse’s Petrie School of Music is the world’s first women’s college to be named an All-Steinway School an honor reserved for a select group of colleges and Janiec was succeeded in 1997 by conductor David Effron. David Effron is an American conductor and educator After earning a Bachelor of Music degree in piano from the University of Michigan and a Master Keith Lockhart became the Artistic Advisor and Principal Conductor from October 2007. For the baseball player see Keith Lockhart (baseball Keith Lockhart (born November 7, 1959, Poughkeepsie, New York
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. David Daniels (born 12 March 1966) is an American Countertenor. For the baseball player see Keith Lockhart (baseball Keith Lockhart (born November 7, 1959, Poughkeepsie, New York Roberto Díaz was principal Viola of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1996 to 2006 and is the president/director of the Curtis Institute of Music, of which The Curtis Institute of Music is a conservatory in Philadelphia Pennsylvania that offers courses of study leading to a performance Diploma Bachelor of Music