Pippa Macmillan is a renowned specialist of historical bass instruments. After three years as a core member of Tafelmusik, she moved to Australia in 2022 and performs regularly with Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Pinchgut Opera, Australian Romantic and Classical Orchestra, and Australian Haydn Ensemble. The first undergraduate of the Royal Academy of Music, London, to specialize in Baroque Bass, she went on to complete a Master’s degree in Historical Performance at The Juilliard School, New York. Between 2015 and 2019 she was Professor of Baroque Bass at the Royal College of Music, London.
When living in her native UK, Pippa performed 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 has performed with Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, English Baroque Soloists, Academy of Ancient Music, and Florilegium. She has also appeared as guest principal with 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 fully qualified Suzuki cello teacher, as well as a trained Suzuki double bass and piano teacher, and throughly enjoys teaching and watching students develop. She now teaches as part of an initiative set up by the Australian Chamber Orchestra in a school program that gives every child the opportunity to play the violin or cello.