Kip Zimmerman

Kip Zimmerman joins the Boston Symphony Orchestra as Associate Principal Oboe at the start of the 2026-2027 season, holding the Farla and Harvey Chet Krentzman chair. Zimmerman has performed in the woodwind sections of such ensembles as the Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. He was the winner of the 2016 International Double Reed Society Young Artist Competition, a participant in the 2015 NYO-USA residency and China tour, and a fellow in the Verbier Festival Orchestra from 2020-2023. Zimmerman’s primary teachers have included Richard Woodhams at the Curtis Institute of Music, the BSO’s John Ferrillo at the New England Conservatory, and Robert Walters at Oberlin Conservatory. Beyond his work as a performer, Zimmerman brings to the stage a uniquely technical perspective from a now decade-long collaboration and apprenticeship with the oboe maker Covey and Ramsay. For the last several years he has performed exclusively on oboes of his own acoustical specification and handiwork as well as on restorations of exceptional instruments from the early 20th century which serve to inform his modern builds. Zimmerman is thrilled to bring this work to Boston, a city known for its deeply academic culture and history as a major center of musical instrument manufacturing in the United States.