Elias Brown, a conductor whose path to the podium began in Santa Monica's public school music classrooms, has been named the 2026 recipient of the Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award, the largest grant currently given to American conductors in the formative years of their careers.
The Solti Foundation U.S. announced the honor July 16. Board Chair Penny Van Horn and Artistic and Awards Committee Chair Elizabeth Buccheri said Brown had built a steadily expanding career marked by imaginative programming and deepening relationships with orchestras and festivals since the foundation first recognized him with Career Assistance Awards in 2023 and 2024.
Brown described the recognition as a high mark for any young American conductor.
"It's a tremendous honor to receive this award — the Solti Conducting Award is perhaps the biggest award that an early-career American conductor can receive," he said.
The prize carries concrete benefits. Brown said it includes a $30,000 award along with introductions to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chicago Lyric Opera arranged by the foundation, plus a year of professional mentorship. He said he also viewed the honor as recognition of his work so far and "an important step towards invitations for new projects and collaborations with orchestras and arts institutions in the United States."
Brown traces the origins of his career to the music programs of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District. He started on an inherited piano as a boy, then picked up the trumpet in the fourth grade at Grant Elementary School, where a teacher stayed late to give lessons that stretched for hours. He went on to play in ensembles at John Adams Middle School and Santa Monica High School and first held a conductor's baton after his essay on what music meant to him won a school contest, earning him the chance to lead the UCLA Wind Ensemble.
"I give my teachers and the SMMUSD music program complete credit for making this career possible," Brown said. He noted that music was built into his schooling from age 8 to 18, a period when mentors "challenged me to strive to improve through consistency of practice."
"This is precisely what made music into a second language, and ultimately made this path feel like a real possibility," he said.
Asked what he would tell a Santa Monica fourth-grader picking up a trumpet this year, Brown pointed to the range of music the instrument opens up, from orchestra and jazz to the traditions of Latin America and the Balkans, and urged young players to stay curious.
"We say that we 'play' or 'make' music, not 'work' music — coming to practice with a sense of curiosity and play is what opens the door to a fulfilling life in music," he said.
Brown, who now lives in Berlin, has studied and worked on both sides of the Atlantic. After completing his undergraduate degree at Yale University, where he was named first trumpet in the Yale Symphony Orchestra and led his first opera and ballet projects, he studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London with Sian Edwards. He later enrolled in the conducting program at the Berlin University of the Arts and was chosen for the German Dirigenten Forum. He was mentored by Esa-Pekka Salonen as a Salonen Fellow and has assisted Salonen at the San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Orchestre de Paris.
He has made recent debuts with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Danish Chamber Orchestra, Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra and Iceland Symphony Orchestra, and he won first prize at the Korean National Symphony Orchestra International Conducting Competition in Seoul. His 2026-27 season includes the October release of his first full-length album, "ACCORDATURA," recorded with the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra.
Brown said he expects to build his career in both Europe and the United States.
"I ultimately see my career developing on both sides of the Atlantic, like many American conductors before me," he said, adding that he hoped the award would bring more opportunities, "particularly on the west coast!"
His summer engagements include the U.S. premiere of a work he co-composed for New York's MATA Festival, a role as cover conductor for Barber's "Vanessa" at Italy's Spoleto Festival dei Due Mondi, and an artist residency at Hotel Pupik in Austria.