James Zimmermann was the principal clarinetist of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra (NSO) for more than a decade until he was fired in 2020 over accusations of "racial harassment." As the Washington Free Beacon reported at the time, Zimmerman had reportedly "insulted, intimidated, and even stalked his black colleagues, going so far as to menacingly drive by their homes."

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None of that was true, as six of Zimmermann's colleagues and the Orchestra's own documents showed, the Free Beacon reported. Instead, they correctly called Zimmermann an "early victim of the ideological cold war that turned hot in the summer of 2020."

Here's some more of what unfolded at NSO:

At the center of those tensions was Titus Underwood, who would become the first black principal oboist at a major U.S. orchestra. His rise marked the start of Zimmermann’s fall. It also marked the triumph of tokenism at the Nashville Symphony, which denied Underwood a chance to succeed on his own merits. In an ironic twist, it was Zimmermann’s zeal for meritocracy that helped Underwood rise in the first place.

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But Underwood was inadvertently outed in the final round of the [blind] audition. The audition committee, including Zimmermann, had narrowed it down to one candidate, but whoever was behind the curtain hadn’t impressed. That meant they had two options: send the candidate home and hold another audition, or give the candidate a trial period and make a decision at the end of it. Before they could finish deliberating, a violinist—having misjudged the need for anonymity—burst out from behind the screen and announced that the candidate was Titus Underwood.

Underwood’s outing tipped the scales against him. The audition committee had been leaning toward a trial run, but backpedaled once they learned that the candidate had been struggling in the orchestra for over a year. Giancarlo Guerrero, the symphony maestro, was especially sour on Underwood, according to three members of the committee who stressed that principal oboe is one of the most important seats in any orchestra. At Guerrero’s urging, the committee agreed to send Underwood on his way without telling him what had happened.

Sickened by what he described as a "disgusting" breach of fairness, Zimmermann urged his colleagues to stick with their initial inclination and offer Underwood the trial period. "If Titus had remained anonymous, as he should have, he would have been given [a] rightly earned opportunity" to prove his mettle, Zimmermann wrote in an email to the committee the next day.

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Underwood was given an opportunity to prove himself during a contractual two-week trial period, after which the NSO committee would vote on Underwood's merits. That vote was never held, and Guerrero appointed Underwood unilaterally.

When Underwood began struggling, Zimmermann would often ask him to stay late to practice, something Underwood took personally. Underwood would go on to lodge a human resources complaint against Zimmermann.

What followed was increased tensions in the NSO, and when another musician, Emilio Carlo, joined, Carlo took an immediate dislike to Zimmermann. Soon both Underwood and Carlo were accusing Zimmermann not only of being "racially insensitive" but also "potentially predatory."

Finally, in February 2020, Zimmermann was fired from the NSO. In the end, Zimmermann told the Free Beacon, "I get to walk away with integrity," but that Underwood was the real victim, and that Underwood "has his whole career built on a house of cards. I feel sorry for him."

Fast forward to 2025 and Zimmermann, who had long put NSO in the rearview mirror, was looking to get back into an orchestra. He saw the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra (KSO) as an opportunity.

"Knoxville was my chance to get back in the game. If you want in, you have to win. So that’s what I did," Zimmerman said in an interview with Townhall.

For his blind audition, Zimmermann poured himself into practicing. "I put in 100 hours, two to three hours a day, for months, to take a blind audition against two days' worth of candidates," he said.

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"It's a massive feat to get into that type of shape – top, top, shape," Zimmermann added. “This is nothing like a job interview — you don’t fly across the country and spend hours training.”

That work paid off, and Zimmermann was offered the position following the grueling blind audition process. He met the conductor and his future colleagues.

"I was told, 'You can start in two weeks, we’ll get you on the payroll,'" Zimmermann said. He told KSO he had a conflict in two weeks; he was playing at Carnegie Hall. So he was told he'd get a phone call the next day.

That phone call never came.

What did happen was Zimmermann got call from the KSO CEO, Rachel Ford. Zimmermann said Ford told him he was no longer getting the job because of Nashville. "She said, 'Final decision' and hung up, and emailed recap of the conversation," he said.

"They never wanted to hear my side of it," Zimmermann added. Prior to the audition, Zimmermann had sent his resume, so they could have looked into his background prior to the audition. "Why did they invite me at all?"

Zimmermann believes DEI is also at play at KSO. "Next guy on the list happened to be non-white – using the bogus story to hire a non-white player," he said.

Fed up, Zimmermann took to social media to share his story, where it got the attention of Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon and her office.

When asked about the attention his story is getting, Zimmermann said, "I feel like this is great. I don’t want to say I’m happy about this newfound fame. I’ve been there, done all that."

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He's been interviewed by Megyn Kelly, which he called "surreal."

Zimmermann filed suit against the KSO, but he's not seeking money or fame. Just the opportunity to do what he loves, and what he's good at.

"My qualifications speak for themselves," Zimmermann said. Not only was he principal clarinetist in Nashville, he played at Barack Obama's second inauguration, helped create Disney's new theme music, and has played on the soundtracks of best-selling video games.

“This is not my hobby. This is not something I do after work for fun. This is what I do to pay the mortgage," Zimmermann said.

He also wants to preserve the arts, restore a merit-based system for things like symphonies, and make classical music accessible to "normies" rather than just "rich connoisseurs."

In a video he posted to X, Zimmermann said, "Hopefully I'll win my lawsuit and make an example of the Knoxville Symphony, and orchestras will go back to hiring the best players the way they did before DEI ruined the business." And he warned, "It's either that or Leftists keep running orchestras into the ground until they're gone completely, all in the name of diversity, equity, and inclusion."

"It feels great to be an ambassador for music and meritocracy," Zimmermann said. "It’s my life’s work."

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