Dr. Nicolas Lell Benavides has worked with groups such as the Washington National Opera, The Glimmerglass Festival, West Edge Opera, Nashville Opera, Shreveport Opera, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Friction Quartet, and Nomad Session.
He was a fellow at the Eighth Blackbird Creative Lab and the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music. Nick was the first ever Young Artist Composer in Residence at The Glimmerglass Festival.

He premiered a new opera for Washington National Opera called Pepito with librettist Marella Martin Koch. He and Marella will premiere a new opera, Tres Minutos, with Music of Remembrance in 2022 with generous support from the National Endowment for the Arts. Nick and Marella were selected as one of West Edge Opera’s Aperture opera teams and are developing an opera about civil rights icon Dolores Huerta.
​
Nick has studied at Santa Clara University, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music.

"So "Pepito" got pride of place.  It wasn't just because dogs and children tend to steal the show.  It was because Nicolas Lell Benavides, the composer, and Marella Martin Koch, the librettist, found a way to sketch complete characters in swift sure lines."
​ -The Washington Post