Sziget Festival’s Daniel Panaitescu Honored

Daniel Panaitescu, the former booker of Hungary’s iconic Sziget festival who died in a car crash in July, will be posthumously awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the European Festival Awards Jan. 11.  

– Dan Panaitescu

Just last year, Panaitescu received an EFA for Sziget’s 2015 line-up. His bookings helped grow the festival to one of Europe’s biggest events, attracting almost 500,000 attendees from more than 100 countries per year.

Panaitescu was born in Brasov, Romania, on Nov. 6, 1955. He graduated from the University of Bucharest in 1980 with an economics degree, and fled from socialist Romania to Hungary in 1989.

“‘Do not shoot!’ was the only Hungarian expression he knew at that time,” a bio accompanying the award announcement reads. “Granted political asylum, his initial plan was to go further but this didn’t come to fruition. Instead he found friends, shelter, and work in Budapest – the future birthplace of Sziget.”

On July 15, 2016, Panaitescu died in a car accident in Alba Iulia. He is survived by his two children and wife, Kata Hocz.

“The bond between Panaitescu and Hocz was considered ‘a real Sziget love,’ as the latter also worked on the festival as its Head of Finance before the birth of their children,” the bio reads. “Panaitescu’s vast contributions to the festival industry and the admiration felt towards him from those within it, at every level, are the reasons that the European Festival Awards has named him as this year’s recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award.”