About us

Our company in its current form exists since 1981. But we are 'standing on the shoulders of giants' such as, for example, Dirk Kuiper, Albert Cooper and Bickford Brannen. We specialize in manufacturing low flutes. The innovative "Key-on-Key mechanism" and the patented Kingma System^® are designs of Eva Kingma.

The Kingma Company originated in Holland in the early 1950s, shortly after World War II. At that time there was a great shortage of wind instruments and Dirk Kuiper, who was the second flutist in the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, founded his small company to meet the demand for new flutes. For over 20 years Kuiper was known for his wooden, silver, and gold C-flutes. He also built alto flutes, which at that time were unusual. In 1975 Eva Kingma joined Dirk Kuiper in building flutes. In 1981 Eva Kingma took over the company. On February 12th 2006 Dirk Kuiper died at the age of 92 years after a fruitful life. Since 1988, the company is located in the picturesque rural village of Grolloo in the north of the Netherlands.

My work is only possible in collaboration with the support of many persons. I am indebted to many people who contributed ideas, technical solutions, artistic opinions, and motivation. Some of them I would like to mention: Dirk Kuiper, Albert Cooper, Bickford and Laura Brannen, Matthias Ziegler, Robert Dick, Carla Rees, Jos Zwaanenburg, and Anne La Berge. But so many other people have been kind, supportive, and pivotal for my work.

I am grateful for the very inspiring collaboration with Bickford Brannen since 1991. This resulted in the beautiful Brannen-Kingma System® flute, currently in production with the Brannen Company and the Levit Company.
Our collaboration resulted, several years later, in the Kingma & Brannen design Alto flute, and Bass flute.