Christopher Zimmerman
Christopher Zimmerman is Music Director of two American orchestras: the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra and the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony Orchestra.
Under his artistic leadership, the Fairfax Symphony has become one of the region's most talked-about ensembles, earning consistent praise from critics. Known for his musical and sensitive accompanying, Mr. Zimmerman has worked with many of the world’s great artists including Yo Yo Ma, Renee Fleming, Izthak Perlman, Simone Dinnerstein, Jeremy Denk, Chee-Yun, and Philip Langridge.
Reviewing a 2023 concert featuring soprano Renée Fleming, Washington Post chief critic Michael Andor Brodeur wrote that "carried along atop maestro Christopher Zimmerman's deeply engaged and emotionally attentive orchestra, Fleming made Strauss's well-worn songs feel fresh, new and alive." The Washington Classical Review was equally impressed, describing a "surging rendition of the Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde," and praising the orchestra's performance of Strauss's tone poem in the same program: the violin section, twenty-four strong, tackled the hero's theme "with adventurous daring," solo violin and oboe "sang sweetly in the amorous episodes," and the four horns called out the second heroic theme "forcefully." The critic concluded that the piece — "exceptionally challenging across the orchestra" — "sounded polished and expansive." Another Washington Post writer, Stephen Brookes, put it simply: Zimmerman "has been injecting adrenalin into this ensemble" and has "made the Fairfax players a serious force to be reckoned with."
A committed champion of new music, Zimmerman has led more than 65 orchestral premieres by composers of national and international renown, many of them World or U.S. premieres. He is equally drawn to the unconventional, regularly building concert experiences that fuse orchestral music with dance, theatre, and video.
His work with the Fairfax Symphony has brought major recognition: a 2013 Washington Area Music Award (WAMMIE) for Best Classical Orchestra, and in 2011, first place in the professional orchestra category of The American Prize in Conducting, a national award spanning conductors of every genre. His U.S. operatic conducting debut — Carlisle Floyd's Susannah — took first place in the National Opera Association competition, a feat he repeated two years later with Bright Sheng's Song of Majnun.
Teaching runs just as deep through Zimmerman's career. He joined the conducting faculty at the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati in 1993, serving as Music Director of its concert orchestra, before being named Director of Orchestral Studies at the Hartt School and Music Director of the Hartt Symphony in 1999. From 2013 to 2018 he was Principal Conductor of the American Youth Philharmonic Orchestra, where he now holds the title of Principal Guest Conductor.
Zimmerman earned his B.A. in Music from Yale University and his Master's degree in conducting from the University of Michigan, studying under Gustav Meier. He went on to study with Seiji Ozawa and Gunther Schuller at Tanglewood, apprenticed under Andrew Davis at the Toronto Symphony, and served as assistant conductor to Václav Neumann and the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra in Prague.
