In 1997 Nayden Todorov founds the International Thracia Summer Music Festival. The idea to create such a festival has existed since 1992, when the 18-year-old conductor had spoken with the head of the Plovdiv offices of the Borghese Foundation, Rafaele Borghese, to create a new festival in the summer months when the Philharmonic Orchestra, the State Opera and the Musika Agency for chamber music take hiatus and the city’s cultural life comes to a virtual standstill. Unfortunately the Plovdiv Borghese Foundation ceases to exist a year later, and Nayden Todorov offers the idea to the Musika Agency, which doesn’t respond to the suggestion. Some years later, in December 1996, the conductor returns from Jerusalem with a ready program for the festival and offers it to the Jeunesses Musicales Foundation in Plovdiv. In February 1997 Nayden Todorov returns once again to Bulgaria and begins preparations for the First Plovdiv International Summer Music Festival. In June of that same year the president of the Jeunesses Musicales Foundation, Kirill Tarpov, decides not to work on this project but rather to create an “Autumn in Old Plovdiv” Youth Festival, and Nayden Todorov invites musicologist Andrey Andreev to be Executive Director in Tarpov’s stead. The new chief Andreev has the idea of naming the festival “Summer in Plovdiv,” but Todorov already has the idea of making out of this project an event taking place in different cities in the historic Thracia region of Bulgaria and, in the future, in Greece and Turkey. And so on 3. of August 1997 the first Thracia Summer Festival begins.