Culture & Heritage Museums is a family of museums in York County, SC, which includes Historic Brattonsville, Main Street Children’s Museum, McCelvey Center, and Museum of York County. – Pictured is The Carolina Chocolate Drops at The McCelvey Center’s Lowry Family Theater.
The mission of the Culture and Heritage Museums is to communicate and preserve the natural and cultural histories of the Carolina Piedmont, inspiring a lifetime of learning.
The McCelvey Center’s Lowry Family Theater
The McCelvey Center is the original site of the Yorkville Female Academy founded in 1852 and includes the 500-seat Lowry Family Theater. Noted for its remarkable acoustics, the historic theater has a lovely 1920s ambiance and hosts the annual Southern Sound Series and the Grand Ole McCelvey summer concert series. The mission of the Lowry Family Theater is to present the unique heritage of the Carolina Piedmont through the performing arts while maintaining a quality venue for community enrichment. http://chmuseums.org/mccelvey
About the Southern Sound Series:
“The Carolina Piedmont is the birthplace of a number of different styles of American folk music, including country, bluegrass, blues and gospel. European, African and Native American musicians from the Carolinas learned from each other and influenced each other, and in so doing created the unique musical forms of American music that are now famous throughout the world.”- Michael Scoggins, Historian for Culture & Heritage Museums.
The multi-cultural origins of the musical genres of blues, folk, bluegrass, country and gospel came together in the early history of the Carolinas. These musical roots are an essential component in telling the story of the Carolina Piedmont. In alignment with the mission of Culture & Heritage museums, the Southern Sound Series brings today’s contemporary Americana music to the regional community. The McCelvey Center came into the fold of Cultural & Heritage Museums in 2001; the historic Lowry Family Theater was restored and outfitted as a state-of-the-art performance venue in 2008 and has been the gleeful home of the Southern Sound Series since the series’ inception in 2012. The 2015 Southern Sound Series is presented by the Friends of McCelvey in the McCelvey Center’s Lowry Family Theater.
