His departure will leave another vacancy at the Louisville Orchestra, which recently came close to bankruptcy and has faced ongoing strife between musicians and management over contracts and pay. The orchestra is searching for both a music director and an executive director — the latter to replace Scott Provancher, who left to become vice president of Cincinnati's Fine Arts Fund.

Solotoff's destination, the Portland Symphony, is looking for its own music director; according to the Courier-Journal, two candidates — David Alan Miller, music director of the Albany Symphony, and Edwin Outwater, resident conductor of the San Francisco Symphony — are also finalists in the Louisville Orchestra's music director search.