Kermit Poling (born 1960, Cleveland, Ohio, United States) is an American conductor, violinist, and composer. Kermit Poling is Music Director of both the South Arkansas Symphony and the Shreveport Metropolitan Ballet. He has performed extensively throughout the United States and abroad, including concerts in Mexico, England, Ireland, France, Austria, Italy and Switzerland. His many guest conducting appearances have included the Orquesta Sinfónica del Estado de México, the Riverside (NJ) Symphonia, the Moscow Chamber Orchestra and Moscow Ballet, Filharmonia Veneta, Ballet South, Opera Lewanee!, the Adrian Symphony, the Mayormente Mozart Festival of Puerto Rico, and the Inter-American Festival of Contemporary Music. A virtuoso violinist, he performed 27 seasons as concertmaster of the Shreveport Symphony Orchestra, having also performed many solo works with the orchestra. He remains the Shreveport Symphony's Associate Conductor, having previously served as Interim Music Director. Also a composer and arranger, Poling's has composed a dozen ballets including Snow White, Wizard of Oz, Aladdin, Phantom of the Opera and Beauty and the Beast. In 2003, he also arranged and conducted a new orchestral show with the Cox Family of Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou fame for a special Shreveport Symphony Orchestra fundraising event. He has similarly created orchestral arrangements for a wide range of artists, including Grammy winning guitarist Kenny Wayne Shepherd and blues singer Irma Thomas. His work, Candles and Dreidels has been performed by symphonies throughout the country. He was awarded a commission for a ballet based on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which premiered in the spring of 2006. Poling received the Outstanding Artist in Music Fellowship in 2000 from the State of Louisiana and the Music Fellowship from the Shreveport Regional Arts Council in 1996. He was awarded a conducting scholarship to the Tanglewood Music Center, studying with Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Masur, Gustav Meier and Seiji Ozawa, and received scholarships from the Boston Conservatory of Music and the Cleveland Institute of Music. The Shreveport Summer Music Festival commissioned a series of works, including three string quartets - Within the Orb of Glories Wearing, Along These Footsteps to Paradise, Visions of the Virgin - and a large work commemorating the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War entitled "No Sound of Trumpet nor Roll or Drum." His recording of his first guitar concerto and the orchestral version of Along These Footsteps to Paradise with the London Symphony Orchestra was a Global Music Award winner.