CHARLOTTESVILLE -- The city's arts and culture scene boasts countless reputable galleries and a new venue that can welcome big-time players.

The Charlottesville & University Symphony Orchestra uses student and professional musicians for a half-dozen concert weekends during the school year.

Live Arts offers a full season of theatrical performances. The restored Paramount Theater offers a year-round selection of popular and classical music, plays, comedy, dance and variety.

The University of Virginia stages numerous music and dance performances throughout the year. And Charlottesville contains a remarkable 75 art galleries, said Nancy Brockman, executive director of the Piedmont Council of the Arts.

"We're looking at expansions of artist performances, exhibitions and other cultural events on all fronts," she said.

The Charlottesville Pavilion, which opened on the east end of the downtown pedestrian mall last year, is beginning to draw big-name concert acts that rarely venture outside major cities, Brockman said.

U.Va.'s new John Paul Jones Arena will mark the first time the Charlottesville area has had a venue large enough to host Cirque du Soleil, which will arrive in August. The homegrown Dave Matthews Band will play the 15,000-seat arena in September.

The Virginia Festival of the Book has drawn the likes of Stephen Ambrose, Nikki Giovanni and Gay Talese during its annual March gathering. This year, 26,000 attendees and 388 authors took part in the readings and discussions, which are organized by the locally based Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.

The Virginia Film Festival, held each October, has welcomed Anthony Hopkins and Sigourney Weaver for panel discussions, exhibits and awards.

Still, the city isn't likely to compromise its small-scale specialties.

The Tuesday Evening Concert Series, held inside U.Va.'s Cabell Auditorium, brings notable and up-and-coming chamber-music talent to crowds that have filled the venue for 12 years, said Karen Pellon, executive director.

The series has 900 subscribers for 850 available spaces. Subscriber cancellations typically leave enough seats for nonsubscribers, Pellon said.

The series draws its audience from a wide geographical area, she said.

"Our aim several years ago was to get to the point of having the quality be so high that people would come and subscribe even if they don't know the artist," Pellon said.

The McGuffey Art Center downtown has become an anchor of the city's visual-arts scene since opening 30 years ago. The center, run by an artists' cooperative, saved a historic, abandoned city elementary school when artists began operating out of it, said past President Jeannine Regan.

It has since enjoyed a special relationship with the city, paying below-market rent in exchange for open studios and numerous outreach programs to Charlottesville schoolchildren, such as free lessons, Regan said.

The way real estate prices have soared recently, even below-market rent has become less affordable. The 42 painters, sculptors, ceramists and other artists in the cooperative plan to raise their profile in the community with more outreach, she said.

"In the past year or so, we've been broadening our interactions with the city and with the community," Regan said.