David Schildkret joined the faculty of the Herberger College School of Music at Arizona State University as Professor of Music in 2002. Schildkret holds the Doctor of Music and the Master of Music degrees in Choral Conducting from Indiana University School of Music, where his primary teachers were Robert Porco and George Buelow. He earned the Bachelor of Arts in Music degree from Rutgers University, where he studied with David Drinkwater and F. Austin Walter.

In addition to teaching at ASU, he is the Music Director of the Mount Desert Summer Chorale in Bar Harbor, Maine, and is Director of Music at Scottsdale United Methodist Church. He is the Founding Editor of The Choral Scholar, the online journal of the National Collegiate Choral Organization (NCCO) and is the NCCO board member for Arizona. He is active in the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) and serves as the Repertory and Standards Chair for Four-Year Colleges and Universities in Arizona ACDA.

His conducting experience includes eight seasons as music director of the Finger Lakes Symphony Orchestra in Geneva, New York, numerous appearances as guest conductor with regional choirs at all levels, and appearances with various small orchestras and ensembles, in addition to conducting his collegiate groups. From 1997-2002, he was a frequent guest conductor with the Piedmont Chamber Singers in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

He conducted the ASU Chamber Singers at conferences of the Arizona Music Educators Association and the ACDA Western Division.  The Chamber Singers' 2008 performance at the ACDA Western Division Convention in Anaheim, California, was the first such appearance for an ASU choral ensemble since 1993.

Schildkret has given numerous talks and published papers on the music of Bach, Mozart, and Handel.  He has organized major festivals at ASU, one devoted to the music of Leonard Bernstein and Ernest Bloch and another honoring the 200th anniversary of the birth of Felix Mendelssohn. His articles have appeared in the newsletters of the Mozart Society of America and the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music, in the Choral Journal, Bach, Eighteenth-Century Life, and the NATS Bulletin. He has published reviews in the American Choral Review and has written liner notes for numerous recordings.

Schildkret is deeply interested in the visual arts and in culture. He is working on a book, Echoes of Eden: the Garden as Metaphor in Art, Music, and Literature, which explores the ways in which artists, composers and writers employ the symbolism of the garden in their work. He incorporates visual art and literature into his teaching of music history, and has led several study trips to England and Italy.

Prior to coming to Arizona State University, Schildkret taught at the University of Rochester, Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, and Salem College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where he was dean of the School of Music.