Originally from Lagrangeville, New York, double bassist Logan May currently lives in Miami Beach, Florida, where he is a Fellow with the New World Symphony. He is a recent graduate of The Juilliard School, where he received his master’s degree studying with Timothy Cobb and Harold Robinson, the respective principal bassists of the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Prior to Juilliard, Logan studied at the Manhattan School of Music with Mr. Cobb.  

In the summer of 2021, Logan was awarded the second-place prize at the International Society of Bassists’ Orchestral Competition. He has also participated in the Spoleto Festival USA, Aspen Music Festival, Wabass Institute, Bowdoin International Music Festival, and has also been a participant with the New York String Orchestra Seminar in both 2020 and 2021.

Outside of the New World Symphony, Logan has performed with the Atlanta Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Classical Players, The Juilliard Orchestra, Juilliard415, Juilliard Opera, Apex Ensemble, and the Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra. He has had the privilege of serving as principal bassist under conductors such as Michael Tilson Thomas, Stéphane Denève, Sir Antonio Pappano, Barbara Hannigan, Marin Alsop, Pablo Heras-Casado, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Peter Oundjian, David Chan, and Jeffrey Milarsky, as well as in the bass sections for Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Jaap Van Zweden, Santtu-Matias Rouvali, Herbert Blomstedt, Carlos Miguel Prieto, and Nathalie Stutzmann. Logan is a substitute musician with the Atlanta Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Albany Symphony, and his hometown orchestra, the Hudson Valley Symphony.

Logan’s love of chamber music began the summer of 2015 at Kinhaven Music School which has impacted his approach to bass playing ever since. Over his three summers as a part of Kinhaven’s Young Artist Seminar, Logan explored works such as Stravinsky’s L’histoire du Soldat, Vaughan Williams’ Piano Quintet, and most recently Louise Farrenc’s Piano Quintet no. 1. This passion for chamber music has also led Logan to multiple performances at the Manhattan School of Music, where he was a winner of the 2019 Lillian Fuch’s Chamber Music Competition, and most recently, concerts at Juilliard and Juilliard’s Chamberfest.  

Over the past four years, Logan has studied historical performance with Doug Balliett, gaining experience with gut strings on Baroque and Viennese basses, and has performed and toured the Netherlands with Juilliard’s Historical Performance orchestra, Juilliard415. Through Juilliard415, Logan has had the privilege of playing alongside some of the best young historically trained musicians in the world, and with conductors such as Pablo Heras-Casado, Richard Egarr and Paul Agnew. Logan has also toured, performed and recorded with the Twelfth Night Ensemble, a NYC based early music ensemble co-directed by his incredibly gifted friends Rachell Ellen Wong and David Belkovski. Bringing these incredible friends down to the New World Symphony in 2023, Logan has also worked and performed with the likes of Shunske Sato and Aisslinn Nosky.

Logan is indebted to the performing arts programs of the Lagrangeville public school system which nurtured his love of and dedication to music from a young age, leading him to begin his double bass studies with Phil Helm, the bassist of the West Point Army Band. Mr. Helm’s focus on how to truly listen to tone and color, and his approach to thinking of the bass as a beautiful solo instrument, continue to inspire Logan, who incorporates this pedagogy into his own teaching methods today. Logan teaches a private in-person studio, and offers lessons as a member of VirtuAcademy, an online teaching platform that helped students across the country gain access to lessons during the pandemic. Additionally, as a mentor in orchestral settings Logan has coached and played alongside younger bassists as a ringer at Manhattan School of Music’s Precollege program, the New York Youth Symphony, and New World Symphony through their Side-By-Side program.