Brevard Music Center Receives $15,000 Grant From National Endowment For The Arts

National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Chairman Jane Chu has approved more than $80 million in grants as part of the NEA's second major funding announcement for fiscal year 2018. Included in this announcement is an Art Works grant of $15,000 to Brevard Music Center for its Leonard Bernstein Festival, which is part of the 2018 Summer Music Festival. The Art Works category is the NEA's largest funding category and supports projects that focus on the creation of art that meets the highest standards of excellence, public engagement with diverse and excellent art, lifelong learning in the arts, and/or the strengthening of communities through the arts.

"The variety and quality of these projects speaks to the wealth of creativity and diversity in our country," said NEA Chairman Jane Chu. "Through the work of organizations such as the Brevard Music Center, NEA funding invests in local communities, helping people celebrate the arts wherever they are."

"We are honored to have the support of the NEA for our upcoming Bernstein Festival," said Brevard Music Center President & CEO Mark Weinstein. "Their funding not only provides our students with an excellent learning opportunity, but also allows our audiences to enjoy the rich legacy and prodigious accomplishments of a true icon like Leonard Bernstein." For its Bernstein Festival, Brevard Music Center joins arts organizations across the nation in saluting the centennial of celebrated composer Leonard Bernstein.

One of the most prominent and widely published writers on topics in American music, Joseph Horowitz returns to Brevard to participate in a season-long series of events and free lectures providing rich context around the influential composer's music, as well as topics related to social justice and Bernstein's impassioned roles as educator, artist, and humanitarian. BMC's Bernstein Festival includes a series of classical and Broadway concerts featuring beloved works such as Chichester Psalms, Symphony No. 2 ("Age of Anxiety"), and the Mass (Season Finale), among others. Two fully staged performances of the opera Candide and the movie West Side Story (with live symphony) complete BMC's rich and varied festival programming. For more information on projects included in the NEA grant announcement, go to arts.gov.

Founded 82 years ago, the Brevard Music Center stands as one of this country's premier summer classical music training programs and festivals. Each year, 500 gifted students (ages 14 through post-college) come to the Music Center from across the United States and around the world to study with a distinguished faculty and renowned guest artists. Each summer, students participate in a vigorous program of instruction and performance led by BMC Artistic Director and alumnus Keith Lockhart, the Principal Conductor of the Boston Pops and Chief Guest Conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra in London. Brevard's hallmark is the powerful sense of community that re-emerges every June through August as faculty and students present more than 80 remarkable concerts to summer audiences totaling over 40,000.

For more information on BMC, visit brevardmusic.org, call (828) 862-2100, "like" the Brevard Music Center on Facebook, follow @brevardmusic on Twitter, stream season highlights via SoundCloud, and visit the Brevard Music Center YouTube channel for performance videos from previous festival seasons.