fmso music director christopher zimmerman

Christopher Zimmerman has served as Music Director of the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony Orchestra since 2013. Reviewer John Lamb wrote, “Christopher Zimmerman gave the…orchestra a workout Saturday night and gave the audience something to stand and cheer about.” Maestro Zimmerman also serves as Music Director of the Fairfax (Virginia) Symphony Orchestra.

He was recognized as the winner of the American Conducting Prize in 2011, a new award given for nationwide performances by orchestral conductors, choral conductors, and a host of other categories.

His debut with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra was followed by engagements with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. He has since conducted orchestras all over the world, including the Prague Symphony, the Slovak Philharmonic, the Seoul Philharmonic, the Mexico City Philharmonic, the Caracas Philharmonic, National Orchestra of Rio de Janeiro, and the Shenzhen Symphony, to name a few. In opera he has worked as the assistant conductor for Carmen at the Nimes Festival and as assistant conductor for Salome at the Mexico City Opera where he was re-invited to conduct a full production of Gianni Schicchi the following season. His U.S. operatic debut conducting Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah won the National Opera Association’s First Prize as did Bright Sheng’s Song of Majnun, which he also led.

Zimmerman’s career has embraced teaching and working with student orchestras and conductors. In 1993 he joined the conducting faculty at the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati where he was Music Director of their concert orchestra, and in 1999 he was appointed as Fuller Professor of Orchestral Studies at the Hartt School as well as Music Director of the Hartt Symphony. A much sought-after clinician and pedagogue, Mr. Zimmerman continues to teach at workshops and festivals around the world.

Mr. Zimmerman graduated from Yale with a B.A. in Music, and received his Master’s from the University of Michigan. He also studied with Seiji Ozawa and Gunther Schuller at Tanglewood, and at the Pierre Monteux School in Maine with Charles Bruck. Zimmerman served as an apprentice to Andrew Davis and the Toronto Symphony and in Prague, as assistant conductor to Vaclav Neumann and the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra.