Pippa Macmillan is a renowned specialist of historical bass instruments, and she has held the position of principal double bass with Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra in Toronto since 2019. She holds degrees in Historical Performance from the Royal Academy of Music (London), and The Juilliard School (NYC). Following her studies, she was appointed Professor of Baroque Double Bass at the Royal College of Music (London) in 2015, a position she held until she moved to Toronto.
Pippa performs regularly with the English Concert, including at Carnegie Hall and Wigmore Hall. She has played at Glyndebourne Festival Opera and the BBC Proms with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and she performs with Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, English Baroque Soloists, Academy of Ancient Music, and Florilegium. She has recently appeared as guest principal with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and the Handel and Haydn Society, Boston. In 2015 she appeared in London’s West End in the Globe Theatre’s production of Farinelli and the King, and also in the play’s Broadway transfer in 2017.
Pippa is a trained Suzuki teacher on double bass, cello and piano, and has taught and accompanied at a number of Suzuki courses in the UK. Her students are regularly members of the National Children’s Orchestra of Great Britain, and former students have gone on to study at the Royal College of Music’s Junior Department, or be members of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain.