Erik Higgins
Bassist and Artistic Director
Lincoln Crossroads Music Festival Artistic and Executive Director Erik Higgins grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska where he started playing double bass at the age of 10 in the Lincoln Public Schools strings program. Soon after he become the youngest member of Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra, where he played for four seasons before moving away to attend University.
After completing a Bachelors degree at Indiana University School of Music, Higgins studied at the Akademie des Symphonieorchesters des Bayerischen Rundunks, an elite orchestra training academy in Munich, Germany. He later held positions in the Hamburg State Opera, A Far Cry Chamber Orchestra in Boston and is currently the Associate Principal Bass of the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra in Aarhus Denmark.
An avid early music specialist as well, he has been a regularly performing member with the Handel and Haydn Society Orchestra in Boston, the oldest continually performing musical ensemble in the United States, as well as with Concerto Copenhagen, Boston Baroque, Three Notch’d Road, Staunton Music Festival and many other period ensembles.
Higgins has been a musical omnivore from the very beginning of his career. He has performed and recorded with his indie-pop band, Britton Park, he has collaborated with the Silk Road Ensemble and numerous folk musicians, including Mia Marin and Kinan Azmeh. He composes and arranges regularly and is a conducting mentee of Ronald Braunstein, a former Herbert von Karajan Conducting Assistant and founder of the Me2 Orchestra, based in New England.