The Shenandoah Valley Music Festival was created in 1963 so that the people of the rural Shenandoah Valley could have access to professional symphonic music. Since then, other types of music not available in the area, big band, folk, bluegrass and county, have been added. The concert series is in Orkney Springs, a town of 50 people. It is the smallest town in Virginia with two regularly scheduled professional symphony performances and possibly the smallest, most rural, in the country.