Dr. Scott E. Woodard is the Music Director of the Butler Philharmonic Orchestra in Hamilton, Ohio and is the Founding Music Director and Conductor of the West Virginia State Philharmonic Orchestra (formerly known as the Charleston Chamber Orchestra). He is currently a finalist in the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra's Music Director search.   Woodard’s study and pursuit of conducting has taken him all over the world. Past podiums include: guest conductor of the Macon Symphony Orchestra (2006), associate conductor (2016-17) and cover conductor (2013-16) of the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra, finalist in the Pittsburgh Philharmonic Orchestra conductor search (2019), and guest conductor for the Gwinnett Symphony Chamber Orchestra (2020). Future podium dates are booked with the Ohio Valley Symphony Orchestra in Gallipolis, Ohio. Woodard was named First Prize winner of the International Conductor’s Workshop Competition (2006) and First Prize winner at the International Academy of Advanced Conducting in St. Petersburg, Russia, where he is now a full faculty member of the Academy. Celebrated guest artists with whom Dr. Woodard has worked include Victoria Fatu, Romanian violinist Gabriel Croitoru, Israeli tenor Michael Riskin, Cristian Fatu, and Yip Wai Chow. Dr. Woodard’s primary teachers were Dr. Leonid Korchmar of the Mariinsky Theatre and the St. Petersburg Conservatory and Dr. Oleg Proskurnya, with whom he studied the methods of the Leningrad School of Conducting developed and taught by Maestro Ilya Musin at the Leningrad Conservatory from 1932-1999.