Named by Forum Magazine as one of the top ten faces to watch, Centaur recording artist Kermit Poling is Music Director of both the South Arkansas Symphony and the Shreveport Metropolitan Ballet. He has been the Associate/Resident Conductor and Concertmaster of the Shreveport Symphony Orchestra for over 25 years. He performs extensively throughout the United States and around the world both as a violinist and conductor. Recent performances include the Orchestra of the Province of Lecco, Italy, the Orquesta Sinfónica del Estado de México, the Guanajuato Symphony (Mexico), the Riverside (NJ) Symphonia, the Moscow Chamber Orchestra and Moscow Ballet, the Oklahoma City Philharmonic, Filharmonia Veneta, Shenzhen Symphony of China, Opera Lewanee!, the Adrian Symphony, the Mayormente Mozart Festival of Puerto Rico, the Inter-American Festival of Contemporary Music and many other orchestras throughout his career.
Also a composer, Poling's first ballet, Snow White, was commissioned and premiered by the Shreveport Metropolitan Ballet in the spring of 2003 and was repeated in 2004 and 2009 to rave reviews. Other compositions include the ballet The Wizard of Oz, a string quartet Within the Orb of Glories Wearing, and the score to the film Silent Treatment. His most recent works include Phantom of the Opera to be premiered by Ballet Oklahoma this fall, and Aladdin in the spring of 2011 by Shreveport Metropolitan Ballet. He has created orchestral arrangements for a wide range of artists, including Grammy winning guitarist Kenny Wayne Shepherd and blues singer Irma Thomas. He is also currently working on the score to the feature film Cameraman.
Poling received the Outstanding Artist in Music Fellowship in 2000 from the State of Louisiana and twice received a Music Fellowship from the Shreveport Regional Arts Council. His awards include scholarships to the Boston Conservatory of Music and the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Tanglewood Music Center, where he studied with Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Masur, Gustav Meier and Seiji Ozawa. In 2005, Maestro Poling served as one of three international judges for China’s National Young Artists Competition with the China National Symphony in Beijing.
Having many close ties to theater, he has conducted hundreds of theatrical productions for the Majorie Lyons Playhouse of Centenary College, Shreveport Opera, the Greenbriar Theater of Ohio and other theaters throughout the U.S, with repertoire ranging from 1776 to Sweeney Todd. He has received numerous commissions to create new scores for theatrical works, including The Glass Menagerie, Memoirs, Elektra and others. In 1998 he was chosen by Emmy award winning artist William Joyce to compose the music for his stage adaptation of The Leafmen and the Brave Good Bugs.
Maestro Poling has been a featured conductor on NPR's Performance Today, the Arkansas Educational Television Network, the Red River Radio Network, WGBH Boston and has appeared as violinist on Louisiana Public Television and PBS in addition to numerous television and radio stations throughout the country. This season, Centaur Records will release a CD of his newest Christmas arrangements performed by the West Edge String Quartet. Away from the podium, Poling also serves as the general manager of Red River Radio, the public radio network of Northwest and Central Louisiana, South Arkansas and East Texas.