David Schildkret

David Schildkret served on the ASU faculty from  2002 to 2023. He 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.

While at ASU, Schildkret conducted the Choral Union and the Chamber Singers. In 2011, he founded the Barrett Choir, which conducted until his retirement in 2023. At various times, he also conducted the Concert Choir and Canticum Bassum. His teaching at ASU included conducting, score study, and a General Studies course on music and humor. At various times he taught seminars on composers, and before coming to ASU, he taught music theory, music history, and many classes in music appreciation

Schildkret is the director of music ministries at Dayspring United Methodist Church in Tempe and also directs Euphony Ensemble (a group of ASU music graduates), which he founded in 2017, and the Arizona Cantilena Chorale. He has been the  music director of the Mount Desert Summer Chorale in Bar Harbor, Maine, since 1999. From 2003 to 2019, he was director of music at Scottsdale United Methodist Church.

As a member of the Fulbright Senior Fellows roster, he has traveled twice to Venezuela, where he has conducted the State Orchestra of Merida, numerous choirs, and was stage director and conductor for a bilingual production of "You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown," the first time this musical was presented in Venezuela. He has also taught workshops in South Korea.

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. He returned to Salem as a visiting scholar during his sabbatical year in 2009–10.

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.