Olivia Salas joined the Music Academy of the West team in the summer of 2025 as an Artistic Programs Coordinator, and now serves as the Manager of High School and Alumni Initiatives. Olivia has spent the last several years as a music educator and an advocate for access to quality music education regardless of socioeconomic background. Notably, she spent several years working as a Teaching Artist and Education/Curriculum Coordinator for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles (YOLA) program, and she has helped construct both in-school and extra-curricular youth music education programs throughout Los Angeles, California and Charleston, South Carolina.
Olivia is a GRAMMY nominated bassist, songwriter, music educator, and arts advocate. Equally at home in the concert hall and in the recording studio, she was appointed the Principal Bassist of the Savannah Philharmonic in 2023, she regularly performs as a section bassist with the Charleston Symphony, and is currently the Adjunct Professor of Double Bass at the College of Charleston.
She is a graduate from Oberlin College and Conservatory, where she earned bachelor's degrees in both Classical Double Bass Performance and Neuroscience; and she holds a master's degree in Double Bass Performance from UCLA. In addition to her education and performance pursuits, she is interested in the beneficial effects of music, and she has contributed to several neuroscience research publications focused on the potential of music to serve as an alternative treatment of various attentional disorders.
