By Emma Castleberry
Individual tickets are on sale now for the Brevard Music Center (BMC) 2024 Summer Festival, a series of more than 80 symphony, opera, chamber, jazz, bluegrass and Broadway performances at the 1800-seat, open-air Whittington-Pfohl Auditorium and the 400-seat Parker Concert Hall. More than half of the performances are free to attend. The Summer Festival premiers on Saturday, June 1, with the third annual NC Guitar Celebration, a culmination of the 2024 Blue Ridge Guitar Camp with host Bryan Sutton, followed by The Kenny Barron Trio on Saturday, June 8.
“Our approach to festival planning begins with our educational mission to teach the most talented young musicians from around the country and the world to prepare and perform great works at the highest artistic level,” says BMC president and CEO Jason Posnock. “Our concert programming throughout the summer is their curriculum. The professional musicians, guest artists and conductors are their teachers and mentors. The connections that exist between teaching and learning, and nature and music, create an electric atmosphere of creative energy that permeates our practice rooms, teaching studios and concert halls.”
Some notable performances this season include large-scale orchestral works such as Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben, Holst’s The Planets, Marsalis’s The Jungle, and symphonies by Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Copland, and Bruckner. The season also includes a staging of Puccini’s most famous opera La Bohème by the Janiec Opera Company and a screening of The Empire Strikes Back with live orchestral accompaniment. A highlight of the Summer Festival will be a one-week residency of Wynton Marsalis and The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra featuring three concerts from Tuesday, June 25, through Saturday, June 29. “Each concert will be different in size, scope and focus, but each one will be unforgettable in every way,” says Posnock.
The BMC Summer Institute and Festival was founded in 1936 and is world-renowned, bringing nearly 40,000 concert attendees to Brevard and Transylvania County every summer. “Perhaps most importantly,” says Posnock, “the Festival brings our community together on the campus of the Music Center to celebrate the achievements of our students, the brilliance of the world’s preeminent artists, the beauty and excitement of great music and the creative spirit that gives us all a sense of hope and optimism now and in the future.”
See the full schedule and purchase tickets at BrevardMusic.org/tickets or by calling the BMC Box Office at 828.862.2105. The Box Office at Whittington-Pfohl Auditorium is located at Brevard Music Center Campus, 349 Andante Lane. It is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. The Summer Festival runs through August 25 and tickets start at $25.