Born in Toronto and raised in Ottawa, Canada, Jeremy McCoy received his earliest musical training on the piano and as a chorister. He was first introduced to double bass in middle school and, through high school, studied privately with David Currie. Summers spent at Interlochen and with the National Youth Orchestra of Canada included lessons and orchestral coaching with Oscar Zimmerman, Winston Budrow and Thorvald Fredin.
With assistance from the Canada Council for the Arts, Jeremy continued his studies at the Curtis Institute of Music with Roger Scott, earning a Bachelor of Music degree. While at Curtis, the school orchestra toured to Europe and performed with legendary conductors Leonard Bernstein and Sergiu Celibidache. Another highlight of Jeremy’s student years was the opportunity to work with maestro Klaus Tennstedt as Principal bass of the Canadian Chamber Orchestra. At age twenty, Jeremy won a position with Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra. The following season he joined the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. Over the course of thirty-five seasons, Jeremy played more than 5,000 Met performances under music directors James Levine and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, guest conductors Carlos Kleiber, Kirill Petrenko, Seiji Ozawa, Ricardo Muti, Daniele Gatti, Simon Rattle, Christian Thielemann, Daniel Barenboim and others. He retired from his chair as Assistant Principal double bass in May, 2020.
Apart from his orchestral career, Jeremy has appeared in recital at Lincoln Center, on CBC Radio and for the International Society of Bassists. He has performed as concerto soloist with the Atlantic Chamber Orchestra, the Louisiana Philharmonic, Classical Tahoe, the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra and Musica Viva of New York. As a chamber musician, he has collaborated with members of the Arditti, Borodin, Cleveland, Emerson, Guarneri, Juilliard and Tokyo string quartets and with many other eminent and emerging artists. His summer festival appearances include Marlboro, Mostly Mozart, Rockport Music, Banff, Classical Tahoe, Kneisel Hall, Grand Tetons, Bowdoin, Festival Napa Valley, Close Encounters with Music, Lincoln Center Festival, Affinis Festival (Japan), Appalachian Summer Festival, Ottawa International Music Festival, Music and Beyond, Music Festival of the Hamptons and Cooperstown Chamber Music Festival.
With the New York City contemporary music groups Speculum Musicae, Sequitur and Ensemble Sospeso, Jeremy has taken part in many premiere performances and recorded chamber works by modern masters including Elliott Carter, David Del Tredici and Thomas Ades.
Jeremy has performed on symphonic and operatic recordings, several of which won Grammys, for Deutsche Grammophon, Sony, London-Decca, Phillips, Erato and CBC Records and chamber works for Koch Classics, Albany, Naxos, CRI, Mode Records and Concord Jazz. As a studio session player, he has performed as both solo bassist and section leader on dozens of feature film soundtracks and recorded string tracks for a diverse group of popular artists including Bruce Springsteen, David Byrne, Lou Reed, Sting and Natalie Merchant. Jeremy’s two solo recordings have garnered both popular and critical praise. An eclectic collection of duos, Dialogues with Double Bass, was released on Bridge Records in 2005. Baroque Legacy (2012), featuring the gamba sonatas of JS Bach, is available on MSR Classics.
While based in New York City, Jeremy served on the faculties of the Manhattan School of Music, Bard College Conservatory of Music, the Cali School of Music at Montclair State University, Columbia and Penn State Universities, Queen’s College CUNY, the National Youth Orchestra of Canada and Bowdoin International Music Festival. He has presented master classes at leading schools of music across the United States, in Canada, Sweden and Japan and written articles for Strings Magazine. Now making his home in San Antonio, Texas, Jeremy teaches privately and performs both locally and away. His institutional and private students hold positions with orchestras throughout North America, Europe, Australia and East Asia and have made careers in both college and public school music education.
Jeremy performs on an exceptional instrument made by the Venetian luthier Domenico Busan and on double basses by Alfred Meyer of Markneukirchen, Germany and Tetsu Suzuki, Cremona, Italy. He uses strings from Pirastro.
