Manuel Alberto Aybar is the Artistic Director of the Riverside Lyric Opera and Principal Guest Conductor of the Hunan Symphony Orchestra in China.

He was the resident conductor for the Camerata Bach, an early period ensemble in Central America, as well as concurrently serving as music director for the San Antonio School for the Performing Arts and San Fernando Cathedral, the oldest Cathedral Sanctuary in the United States. He also served as the Music Director of the Mount San Jacinto College Symphony Orchestra. Manuel has also worked for the Los Angeles Opera and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

In Latin America his guest conducting engagements have included the national orchestras of Nicaragua, El Salvador and Uruguay, along with the Leon, Granada, Guanajuato and Monterrey Symphonies in Mexico. In the United States he has conducted the Kaplan Symphony, the Macon Sinfonia, the ICW Symphony, the Pacific Symphony Institute Orchestra, the San Antonio Symphony,  the Rochester Civic Orchestra, the Bakersfield Symphony, the San Diego Symphony, the California State University San Bernardino Chamber Orchestra, the Riverside Theater Orchestra, the YMF Debut Orchestra and the Palisades Symphony. He’s also worked closely with the New Professionals Orchestra in London. Other international guest conducting engagements include the Ukrainian State Philharmonic, the Sibiu Philharmonic, and the Rome Festive Orchestra. He also regularly conducts the Zhejiang, Henan and Guangxi Symphony Orchestras in China.

Manuel studied orchestral conducting at the Royal College of Music in London with Neil Thomson and John Farrer, at the California Conducting Institute with Daniel Lewis, and with Jon Robertson at UCLA. He was accepted to the Aspen Music Festival as a seminar conductor in 1995 and was an orchestral conducting fellow at the University of Arizona in 1993. He has performed in master classes directed by Jorma Panula and Otto-Werner Mueller.