A. Scott Wood
​Music Director and Conductor

A. Scott Wood is Music Director and Conductor of the Arlington Philharmonic. Mr. Wood was named Music Director in April 2010, after conducting the orchestra since June 2008. In this capacity, Mr. Wood provides artistic leadership, selects the repertoire, conducts the orchestra and oversees all musical decisions of the organization. Mr. Wood also directs the Amadeus Orchestra, the Montgomery Symphony Orchestra, the National Cathedral School and St. Albans School Orchestra, and the George Washington University Orchestra.

He has guest-conducted the Wolf Trap Orchestra, the Israel Symphony Orchestra Rishon LeZion (Israel's premier opera orchestra), the Orchestra Society of Philadelphia, the Brevard (North Carolina) Philharmonic, the Rutgers Sinfonia, and the Washington Symphonic Brass, which he prepared for a Kennedy Center concert conducted by Leonard Slatkin. He has also appeared as a guest conductor for the Kennedy Center’s popular Messiah Sing-Along and worked with many choral ensembles, including the Vienna Choral Society, the Reston Chorale, the Fairfax Choral Society, the Navy Sea Chanters, and soloists from the Washington National Opera Domingo-Cafritz Young Artists.
​
Mr. Wood conducted the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra at the Shenandoah Valley Music Festival, was conductor-in-residence of the American University Orchestra, and conducted productions at Eldbrooke Opera, The Washington Savoyards, and Signature Theatre.He has been lauded in as “an incredible talent” by the Virginia Commission for the Arts and recognized for achievement in the arts by the American Association of University Women. In 2016, the National Cathedral School named him distinguished holder of the Roeckelein Chair in Music and awarded him a fellowship in recognition of outstanding teachers and their lifelong impact on students. He received the Serage Award for Music Education from the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra. Legendary Bollywood singer Asha Bhosle, the most-recorded musician in history, praised his musicianship to a rapturous audience at Wolf Trap.

Mr. Wood is on the conducting faculty of the Washington Conservatory of Music, where he long directed the Washington Conservatory Orchestra. He has given lectures for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and National Philharmonic at the Strathmore Performing Arts Center, and spoken at the Smithsonian Institution, the Goethe-Institut, the Concurso di Canto Lirico in Peru, for Encore Learning, OASIS, and the Borders College of Classical Knowledge.

​
Mr. Wood has worked with young musicians as well, including the American Youth Philharmonic Orchestra and the Shenandoah Valley, Potomac Valley, Chesapeake, Prince William, and D.C. Youth Orchestras, as well as George Mason University’s Potomac Arts Academy. He has been engaged as a guest conductor for numerous honors orchestras and mentored teacher-conductors through the Fairfax County Public Schools Academy. In 2006, the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra presented him with the Serage Award for Music Education.

Born into a military family, Mr. Wood traveled extensively as a young man and learned the trumpet in a German Musikverein. While attending the University of Illinois, he went to London as a finalist in the International Trumpet Guild Solo Competition. He subsequently was a fellow at the International Conductor’s Workshop in the Czech Republic, was the recipient of the first-ever conducting fellowship given jointly by the League of American Orchestras and Chorus America, and received a grant for study in Italy.

Mr. Wood lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with his wife Mary, their daughters Emma and Eileen, and their dog Pixie.