Boston Symphony Orchestra Appoints Kip Zimmerman as Associate Principal Oboe

The Boston Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Andris Nelsons have appointed Kip Zimmerman as the orchestra's new associate principal oboe, beginning in the 2026–27 season. He will occupy the Farla and Harvey Chet Krentzman chair, succeeding Keisuke Wakao, who retires at the end of the 2026 Tanglewood season after 36 years as the BSO's assistant principal oboe. With this appointment, Zimmerman also becomes principal oboe of the Boston Pops. 

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, BSO principal oboe 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.