bio

Heather Miller Lardin is among the nation’s leading performers on historic double basses and one of the most enthusiastic advocates in America for these instruments. Lardin is principal bassist of Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society, performs regularly with Philadelphia’s Tempesta di Mare and Delaware’s Brandywine Baroque, and is in frequent demand for performance by ensembles around the country.

She is also devoted to spreading broader appreciation of these beautiful instruments and to this end, with flutist Steven Zohn founded the Philadelphia-based ensemble Night Music in 2015 which offers a regular season of concerts exploring chamber music from the Revolutionary and Romantic eras featuring double bass. In 2025, Night Music co-founded the Philadelphia Bach Collective with the vocal group Variant 6, providing free weekday concerts of Bach cantatas to residents and workers in Center City Philadelphia as lunchtime refreshment.

Lardin is committed to teaching others and developing a thriving early-bass-playing community. She serves on the faculty of Juilliard Historical Performance and also teaches Baroque double bass at New England Conservatory, directs the Temple University Early Music Ensemble, and serves on the faculty of several summer festivals. She creates original pedagogical materials for historical bassists, including a self-paced online course hosted at discoverdoublebass.com and her popular 'Baroque Bass Bash' workshops. Recent masterclasses include Peabody Conservatory, Yale University, James Madison University, and Oberlin Conservatory.

Lardin has received the International Society of Bassists Special Recognition Award in both Historical Performance and Scholarship. She studied with Roger Scott at the Curtis Institute of Music and with Homer Mensch at Juilliard, and she worked privately with Harold Robinson. She holds a DMA in Historical Performance Practice from Cornell University, where she studied viola da gamba and violone with John Hsu.

She performs on an Italian double bass (mid 19th-century, maker unknown), a Viennese violone after Stadlmann, ca. 1748 (Oskar Kappelmeyer, 2013), a violone in G after Busch, ca. 1630 (John Pringle, 1993), a violone in D (Dominick Zuchowicz, 1984) a Baroque double bass after Maggini, ca.1620 (Thomas Andres Wolf, 2019), and a bass viol (Marc Soubeyran, 2012).