Heather Killmeyer

Associate Professor

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• killmeyer@etsu.edu
• 423-439-5787
• Martin Center 132

Heather Killmeyer enjoys a varied career as a recitalist, chamber and orchestral musician, and educator. She currently serves as Associate Professor of Double Reeds at East Tennessee State University. Prior to her appointment at ETSU in 2012, she was on faculty at University of the Incarnate Word and maintained a large private studio in San Antonio, Texas.  
  
An active artist-clinician, Dr. Killmeyer has taught clinics and masterclasses in California and throughout the southeast. Her orchestra experience includes performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Symphony Silicon Valley, Las Vegas Philharmonic, Reno Philharmonic, San Antonio Symphony, Corpus Christi Symphony, Knoxville Symphony, Western Piedmont Symphony, Symphony of the Mountains, and the Johnson City Symphony. She has worked with artists as diverse as Béla Fleck, Marvin Stamm, Christopher O’Riley, Elizabeth Pitcairn, Anne-Marie McDermott, David Benoit, actors Martin Sheen and John Cho, and Don Vappie and the Creole Jazz Serenaders.  
   
Renowned for her imaginative programming and experimental approaches to audience engagement, Dr. Killmeyer has performed at International Double Reed Society conferences in the United States and abroad. Her summer engagements have included the Hot Springs Music Festival, National Music Festival, Mozart Festival Texas, and the Classical Music Festival in Eisenstadt, Austria. Since 2015, she has annually served as one of only two oboists worldwide to perform at the International Fellowship of Conductors, Composers, and Collaborators. 
   
A passionate advocate for new music, Dr. Killmeyer has contributed to the oboe repertoire through numerous commissions and consortia.  Recent works written for her have incorporated the sounds and impressions of Appalachia: Lev “Ljova” Zhurbin’s An Appalachian Wind for oboe, bluegrass band, and narrator (2015); Brian DuFord’s Coal Trail on Rails for oboe and prerecorded sound (2018); and Neal Endicott’s solo oboe piece Inverse Variations on An Appalachian Ballad (2021). 
  
Heather Killmeyer earned her Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music, where she studied oboe with Allan Vogel and chamber music with David Weiss and Yehuda Gilad. She graduated from USC with honors for Woodwind Chamber Music and as the Winds & Percussion Department’s outstanding graduate. Prior to her move to Los Angeles, she received her Master of Music with Stephen Caplan at the University of Las Vegas and her Bachelor of Music from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. During her time in Mark Ostoich’s studio at CCM, she was the recipient of the Marcel J. Dandois Memorial Prize in Oboe. Heather has enjoyed additional studies with Jared Hauser and Brenda Schuman-Post on oboe and Sharon Kuster on bassoon.