Conductors Roger Kalia and Sameer Patel are among eight conductors who received the 2018 Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Award. The two have won the honor in the past.

Assistant conductor of the Pacific Symphony and music director of the Pacific Symphony Youth Orchestra, Kalia is also the co-founder and music director of the Lake George Music Festival. Previously, he served as assistant conductor of the Charlotte Symphony, and music director of both the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra (Calif.) and Columbus Symphony Orchestra (Indiana).

His 2018-19 engagements include the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra, the Lake George Music Festival Symphony Orchestra, and Symphony New Hampshire.

Kalia has worked in various capacities with the New York Philharmonic, Royal Scottish National Orchestra and. Pittsburgh, Seattle, Utah, Fort Worth, and Danish National symphonies.

Recipient of the 2013 and the 2017 Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Award, Kalia also won the second prize in the 2011 Memphis Symphony International Conducting Competition and a 2011 Fellowship at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music.

A native of New York, Kalia received his doctorate from Indiana University, where he served as an associate instructor and assistant conductor of the IU Opera Theater and New Music Ensemble.

Associate conductor of the San Diego Symphony and of Idaho’s Sun Valley Summer Symphony, Patel previously served as associate conductor of Indiana’s Fort Wayne Philharmonic.

His upcoming 2018-19 engagements include a return to Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

A three-time recipient of Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Awards (2018, 2017, and 2016), Patel is also the 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 Orchestra’s Bruno Walter National Conductor Preview.

Patel, a graduate of the University of Michigan, has guest conducted with the Orchestra Sinfonica di Sanremo, Leipziger Sinfonieorchester, and Orchestra Giovanile Italiana.

Now in its 14th year of assisting outstanding young U.S. conductors to further develop their talent and careers, the Solti Foundation U.S. is dedicated exclusively to helping budding young conductors.

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