Now in his sixth season with the 200-voice GRAMMY® Award-winning Pacific Chorale, Alex Nelson oversees all concert production, ensemble, and performer needs, including $1.5 million in annual organizational expenses. He continues directly supporting Artistic Director Robert Istad in the Chorale’s long-term artistic planning and priorities.

In his time with the Chorale, Nelson produced many first-time and significant artistic projects for the ensemble beyond its typical season in Costa Mesa and Newport Beach. Highlights from 2023 include the single-concert capture of Monteverdi’s complete Vespers of 1610 and the Chorale’s highly successful 12-day tour of Austria, Germany, and the United Kingdom with 116 participants in July. The Chorale’s first PBS program in 2021, The Wayfaring Project, was the most novel and complex Chorale production in its history. In 2020, the first fully Virtual Tis the Season! similarly was one of the Chorale’s most successful fundraisers ever. Nelson is recognized as Ensemble Manager on the Chorale’s 2022 GRAMMY® Award-winning Mahler’s Eighth Symphony recording from 2019.

Nelson executed the most extensive internal reorganization and strengthening to date of the Chorale’s 70-staff singer core during the early 2020 AB5 contractor-employee conversion. When the pandemic ended the Chorale’s in-person activities, he adapted the choir to remotely produce several high-quality virtual projects, later leading the Chorale’s safe return to regular rehearsals and remarkable live performances in the 2021-22 season.

Nelson previously worked for the Philharmonic Society of Orange County, supervising all concert operations and touring ensembles while serving as the General Manager of the Orange County Youth Symphony. Among many other arts organizations, Nelson worked as Production Manager of Reimagining Opera for Kids, presenting commissioned child-friendly operas for 25,000 students in Central Indiana.

Born in Hollywood to an American father and Polish mother, Nelson was raised in San Pedro and Palos Verdes, later living in Bloomington, Indiana for eight years. Nelson holds a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance from the Indiana University (IU) Jacobs School of Music, in addition to a Master of Arts in Arts Administration from the IU O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

Nelson believes in the transformative power of choral singing to amplify and unite the personal beauty of every individual.