The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans selects 30 outstanding immigrants and children of immigrants pursuing graduate study in the United States, providing up to $90,000 in funding
Are you a New American musician? This Fellowship could change your path
Every year, the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans selects 30 outstanding immigrants and children of immigrants pursuing graduate study in the United States – and the Fellowship is open to musicians.
A legacy of music Fellows
The Fellowship has a long history of supporting students studying classical music, including composers Lera Auerbach (1998 Fellow), Lei Liang (2002 Fellow) and Paola Prestini (1999 Fellow). Prestini has been named one of the top 100 composers in the world by NPR and one of the top 35 female composers in classical music by the Washington Post, and cofounded National Sawdust, one of New York’s leading new music venues.
Liang, an immigrant from China, won the 2021 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2015, and serves as the Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego.
Auerbach, an immigrant from Russia, gave her first public performance at age six and wrote her first opera – which toured the former Soviet Union – at twelve, before coming to the United States and completing degrees in piano and composition at Juilliard.
Elizabeth Joy Roe (2005 Fellow), the daughter of Korean immigrants, is a Decca recording artist and founding member of the Emmy-nominated Anderson & Roe Piano Duo.
‘Being a New American, being a part of this Fellowship, and also being an artist in this country is truly a huge privilege,’ Roe has said, ‘and something that I always remember and am always very grateful for.’ Watch her story here:
What the Fellowship offers
The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans provides up to $90,000 in funding – to support Fellows across all fields of graduate study, including music performance, composition, musicology, and arts administration.
Beyond funding, Fellows become part of a lifelong community of exceptional New Americans: scientists, lawyers, writers, physicians, and artists who gather each year for a conference designed to spark lasting connections across disciplines.
Who Is eligible
To be eligible, applicants must be immigrants or children of immigrants – either a green card holder, a naturalised citizen, someone born abroad who has graduated from both high school and college in the United States, or a person born in the United States to two immigrant parents. They must be pursuing or planning to pursue a graduate degree (including professional degrees and doctoral programmes) at a US institution.
Applicants must be 30 years old or younger at the time of application. There is no restriction on field of study. Musicians pursuing master’s level performance degrees, doctoral work in musicology or ethnomusicology, graduate training in composition, or advanced study in conducting are all welcome to apply. Undergraduate and non-graduate studies are not eligible.
Founded by New Americans, for New Americans
The Fellowship was cofounded in 1998 by Paul and Daisy Soros. Paul came to the United States from Hungary after World War II. Daisy, now nearly 97 and still serving as Board Chair, was born in Bratislava and survived wartime Budapest before arriving in America on a student visa in 1950. They built this fellowship on the conviction that immigrants are among America’s greatest assets – and that the next generation of New Americans deserves the support to fulfill their potential.
Applications due 29 October 2026
The application for the 2027 Fellowship is currently open and due on 29 October 2026, at 2:00 PM ET. We encourage musicians – and the faculty, mentors, and conservatory administrators who know them – to spread the word.
To prepare, you can review the Performing Arts Information Session to get tips directly from past Fellows. On Tuesday 25 August at 3pm ET, there will be a webinar session to focus on applicants in music, composition, and the performing arts, featuring PD Soros Fellows Dave Adewumi (2017 Fellow) and Audrey Chen (2022 Fellow) - Register here.
Learn more at pdsoros.org.
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