Panaitescu to receive lifetime achievement award

Sziget booker Dan Panaitescu will be posthumously presented with the lifetime achievement accolade at the European Festival Awards in January.

Panaitescu, who was killed in a car accident on 15 July, had been with Sziget since 1993, and was instrumental in its transformation from a small, regional Hungarian event to an international festival widely considered among Europe’s best. Speaking at the time, former Sziget programme director Fruzsina Szép (now festival director of Lollapalooza Berlin) said Panaitescu had a “personality that nobody can ever forget” and that “his place in the international festival family [is secured] forever”.

A statement from the awards – which take place on 11 January, on the first night of Eurosonic Noorderslag – says Panaitescu’s “vast contributions to the festival industry, and the admiration felt towards him from those within it, […] are the reasons that the European Festival Awards has named him as this year’s recipient of the lifetime achievement award”.

A full list of awards nominees (including the IQ-sponsored agent of the year prize) is available at the European Festival Awards website.

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