Diane Heffner is an active freelance clarinetist and teacher on both modern and historical instruments. On modern clarinet, she plays regularly with Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble, Alea III, Emanuel Music, Prism Opera, Opera Aperta, and has appeared with Boston Musica Viva, the Vermont Symphony, and various other freelance ensembles. As a period clarinetist, Ms. Heffner performs regularly with Boston Baroque, Handel & Haydn Society, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (San Francisco), the classical wind quartet, “Killing Frost,” The American Classical Orchestra (Connecticut), and has appeared with Musicians of the Old Post Road, Chicago Opera Theatre, the Classical Arts Orchestra (Chicago), the Dayton Bach Society, Portland Baroque Orchestra (Oregon), the Connecticut Early Music Festival, the Boston Early Music Festival, and the American Bach Soloists (California). She has recorded with many of these ensembles on the Telarc, Erato, Harmonia Mundi, Cedille, CRI, Arabesque, GM, Koch, and Troy record labels. Ms. Heffner is on the applied faculty at Tufts University and the All-Newton Music School, where she enjoys jamming to the blues with her sax students as much as shaping phrases of Mozart with her clarinet students.

Ms. Heffner received both BM and MM degrees with honors from the New England Conservatory where she studied clarinet with Joseph Allard and chamber music with Rudolph Kolisch and Leonard Shure.