The Solti Foundation U.S. announces 2018 Career Assistance Awards
Penny Van Horn, Board Chair of The Solti Foundation U.S. and Elizabeth Buccheri, Artistic and Awards Committee Chair, today announced the names of the eight recipients of the 2018 Solti Foundation Career Assistance Awards. The young conductors hold positions throughout the United States, with posts in Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, New Jersey, and New York.

“Supporting and encouraging young conductors at the beginning of their careers is the mission of The Solti Foundation U.S.,” said Ms. Van Horn. “As I have stated in the past, the young musicians we recognize are part of the fabric of our future musical landscape. From what we have seen and heard, it is going to be a glorious, immense vista, full of creativity, energy and passion! We congratulate each of our 2018 awardees.”

Ms. Van Horn revealed Daniel Black, Assistant Conductor, Florida Orchestra (commencing fall 2018); Roger Kalia, Assistant Conductor of Pacific Symphony and Music Director of Pacific Symphony Youth Orchestra, and Co-Founder and Music Director of the Lake George Music Festival (NY); Stilian Kirov, Music Director of the Illinois Philharmonic, Bakersfield Symphony (CA), and New Jersey’s Symphony in C; Farkhad Khudyev, Music Director of Calilfornia’s Hidden Valley Orchestra Institute and Youth Music Monterey County; Stephen Mulligan, Assistant Conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Music Director of the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra; Sameer Patel, Associate Conductor of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra and of Idaho’s Sun Valley Summer Symphony; Stefano Sarzani, who serves as a Solti Fellow at Lyric Opera of Chicago, assisting and covering La Boheme and Il trovatore this fall 2018; and Lidiya Yankovskaya, Music Director with Chicago Opera Theater, a resident artist at National Sawdust in NYC, and Artistic Director of Refugee Orchestra Project as the 2018 Award recipients.

Associate Conductor of the San Diego Symphony, and of Idaho’s Sun Valley Summer Symphony, Sameer Patel previously served as Associate Conductor of Indiana’s Fort Wayne Philharmonic. Upcoming 2018-19 engagements include a return to Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Past guesting engagements have included Germany’s Leipziger Sinfonieorchester, Italy’s Orchestra Sinfonica di Sanremo and Orchestra Giovanile Italiana and Canada’s Toronto Symphony Orchestra abroad, and the National, St. Louis, Detroit, La Jolla, Phoenix, Toledo, Alabama, New Jersey, Knoxville, Pacific,and Reading symphonies, the Fresno, Sacramento and Naples philharmonics, Chicago Sinfonietta, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and Symphony NH in the United States, among others. A three-time recipient of Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Awards (2018, 2017, and 2016), Patel is recipient of a 2014 Chicago Sinfonietta Project Inclusion Conducting Freeman Fellowship, a 2010 Boston Philharmonic Zander Fellowship, and a 2011 Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Scholarship. In 2013, he was a participant in the League of American Orchestras’s Bruno Walter National Conductor Preview.