Qualla: Academy of Music https://qualla.com/academy-of-music-lynchburg-virginia en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:06 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/x/s/academy-of-music-lynchburg-virginia-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Academy of Music https://qualla.com/academy-of-music-lynchburg-virginia Academy of Music: Introduction https://qualla.com/academy-of-music-lynchburg-virginia/ Photo credit Pubdog (talk), Public domain. Sarah Bernhardt played here. So did Anna Pavlova. The Polish pianist Ignace Paderewski sat at a Steinway on this Lynchburg stage and filled the room with Chopin, and somewhere out in the dark the audience held its collective breath. The Academy of Music opened on Main Street in 1905, a Beaux-Arts theater built by the firm of Frye & Chesterman with a Neoclassical interior of plaster swags and gilded boxes. For a few decades it was a regular stop on the touring circuit that ran between New York and Atlanta, and the biggest names on either side of the Atlantic worked its boards. Then vaudeville died, then movies arrived, and most of the legitimate theaters of its generation in Virginia were torn down. This one survived.

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/x/s/academy-of-music-lynchburg-virginia-wp/dnxs-academy-of-music-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Academy of Music: A Stop on the Circuit https://qualla.com/academy-of-music-lynchburg-virginia/ Photo credit Pubdog (talk), Public domain. In the early twentieth century, touring theatrical companies needed a network of houses between the big cities, places where a leading lady could play one night, sleep on a train, and open in the next town the day after. Lynchburg, a tobacco and rail town of seven hills above the...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/x/s/academy-of-music-lynchburg-virginia-wp/dnxs-academy-of-music-a-stop-on-the-circuit.mp3 0:06 2 full Academy of Music: Three Stories of Plaster and Gilt https://qualla.com/academy-of-music-lynchburg-virginia/ Photo credit Pubdog (talk), Public domain. Frye & Chesterman designed in the Beaux-Arts vocabulary that was fashionable for public buildings around the turn of the century, an American take on the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. The exterior runs three stories of dressed stone and brick. The interior was Neoclassical: a de...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/x/s/academy-of-music-lynchburg-virginia-wp/dnxs-academy-of-music-three-stories-of-plaster-and-gilt.mp3 0:06 3 full Academy of Music: Long Dark, Long Restoration https://qualla.com/academy-of-music-lynchburg-virginia/ Photo credit Pubdog (talk), Public domain. The Academy stopped functioning as a touring house in the mid-twentieth century, as live theater gave way to motion pictures and then television. For decades the building sat in various states of use and disrepair, its mechanical systems failing, its plaster cracking, its paint p...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/x/s/academy-of-music-lynchburg-virginia-wp/dnxs-academy-of-music-long-dark-long-restoration.mp3 0:06 4 full Academy of Music: What It Means to Survive https://qualla.com/academy-of-music-lynchburg-virginia/ Photo credit Pubdog (talk), Public domain. Most of the legitimate theaters built in Virginia between 1890 and 1915 are gone. They were torn down to widen streets, converted to discount stores, lost to fires, or simply allowed to collapse. The Academy of Music is one of the only ones still standing, still functioning, stil...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/x/s/academy-of-music-lynchburg-virginia-wp/dnxs-academy-of-music-what-it-means-to-survive.mp3 0:06 5 full