Team — NBCO

Our Team

Martín Alexander Arellano
Conductor & Music Director

MARTÍN ALEXANDER (ALEX) ARELLANO is an award-winning conductor and composer of Nicaraguan-Mexican descent, recognized for his dynamic leadership across opera, symphonic, and contemporary repertoire. A multi-laureate of the 2024 and 2025 American Prizes in Music, he received top honors in Opera Conducting and additional national recognition in conducting Orchestra, Wind Ensemble, Musical Theater, and in Performance of American Music. In 2023, he was awarded Second Jury Prize at the Opéra de Baugé International Conducting Competition in France.

Alex was invited as a guest Music Director with the St. Pete Opera in the 2025–2026 season and was extended with the Santa Clarita Symphony Orchestra in the Los Angeles area, now in the role of Artistic Director. He is the founder and Music Director the North Bay Chamber Orchestra. His programming reflects a commitment to artistic excellence, audience engagement, and the championing of contemporary and American voices.

Read more about Alex at his website: www.AlexArellano.com.

Asher Lurie
Executive Director

Asher Lurie (b. 2003) is a composer, percussionist, and guitarist from Dallas, Texas. He is the winner of the Tribeca New Music Young Composer Competition, the Australia International Composition Competition, and the Composers Concordance Composition Competition. Ensembles Lurie has worked with include Sandbox Percussion, Unheard-of//Ensemble, arx duo, Trio Kanon, KHAOS Wind Quintet, Silver Bow Sound, Atem Ensemble, Latitude 49, Pathos Trio, and Time for Three. His music, shaped by his Jewish heritage and studies in neoclassical metal, blends aggression with dreamlike serenity.

A graduate of the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music, Lurie studied Music Theory and Composition with Donald Scott Stinson. He is currently pursuing his Master’s in Composition at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, where he studies with Pierre Jalbert and Anthony Brandt. Lurie is Founder of the Rice Composers Collective and is excited to be part of the team at the North Bay Chamber Orchestra.

For more info about Asher’s work as a composer, visit his website: www.AsherLurie.com.