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Photo: JeffreyViolin, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Considered one of the premier summer music institutes in the United States, Brevard Music Center hosts 450 high school and college students each summer. Students learn from faculty representing many of the nation's finest college music programs and professional orchestras. Performances nearly every night, June through August, and feature students and faculty with many of the world's leading performers in orchestra and opera.
Brevard Music Center is a classical music venue and festival held annually located in Brevard, North Carolina. It has been the home to their international summer institute and festival that enrolls about four hundred students, age fourteen and older, who participate in orchestra and other large ensembles, an opera program, play chamber music, study composition, and take private lessons. A faculty of sixty is drawn from orchestras, conservatories, and universities. The season runs from the last week of June through the first week of August. Other than classical music, Brevard Music Center hosts contemporary music, bluegrass and popular artists, concerts, and frequent appearances by Keith Lockhart, Ken Lam, and a variety of soloists. With an annual budget of more than three million dollars, the Center contributes substantially to the economy of western North Carolina.
With easy access about 8 mi from town, in Pisgah National Forest on US 276.
About 5 mi further up US 276 from Looking Glass Falls, is the most visited natural attraction in WNC with thousands of "daredevils" sliding approximately 100 ft into an icy mountain pool.
Features many waterfalls including ones made famous from The Last of the Mohicans and 2012's The Hunger Games.
The largest private lake in NC, and the Sapphire area are in the western portion of the county.
It has plunging waterfalls, rugged river gorges, and sheer rock precipices. Great opportunities for backpacking and horseback riding. This section of the Blue Ridge Escarpment spans over 8,000 acres of temperate rainforest and hosts extraordinary biodiversity. The park has 26 waterfalls, the northern shore of Lake Jocassee, and a portion of the 70-mile Foothills Trail.