Personnel

Musical Staff

David Schildkret, Music Director

David Schildkret has served as Music Director of the Mount Desert Summer Chorale since 1999 and conducted his first concerts with the group in the summer of 2000. His broad conducting experience includes leading various groups at Arizona State University (where he served as Director of Choral Activities from 2002 until his retirement in 2023), community and professional orchestras, and choirs at all levels. He has conducted such major choral-orchestral works as Handel's Messiah, Bach's B-Minor Mass, Bloch's Sacred Service, Orff's Carmina Burana, the Requiems of Brahms, Mozart, and Fauré, and Mendelssohn's Elijah. Equally at home, leading choruses and orchestras, he has also led performances of the standard symphonic repertory and works such as Leonard Bernstein's Jeremiah.

Schildkret has taught and conducted overseas, including work at Keimyung University in Daigu, South Korea, and at the University of the Andes in Merida, Venezuela, as a Fulbright Senior Fellow. His work in Merida has included performances with several of the city’s choirs and with the state orchestra.  In 2013, he conducted and staged a bi-lingual production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown in Merida, the Venezuelan premiere of this beloved musical.

Schildkret, a conductor, scholar, performer, and educator, was born in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in southern New Jersey. He holds the Master and Doctor of Music degrees in Choral Conducting from Indiana University, where he studied with Robert Porco and George Buelow. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Music from Rutgers University in New Jersey. Before joining the faculty at Arizona State University in 2002, he was dean of the School of Music at Salem College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  Prior to that, he taught at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, and the University of Rochester in New York.

In addition to his work in Maine, Schildkret is Director of Music Ministries at Dayspring United Methodist Church in Tempe, Arizona, and conductor of the Arizona Cantilena Chorale. His published articles include essays on the music of Mozart, Bach, and Handel and several articles on choral conducting. He is the founding editor of The Choral Scholar, the NCCO's online journal.

A frequent lecturer and guest speaker, he has spoken at the Bar Harbor Historical Society, Acadia Senior College, the Phoenix Art Museum, the Burton Barr Library in Phoenix, and in various locations around Arizona as a speaker for the Arizona Humanities Council.

For more information and for samples of Schildkret's work, visit his website.

Colin Graebert, Accompanist

Colin Graebert, is a choral conductor, accompanist, jazz pianist, and singer currently serving as the Director of Vocal Music at John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor, Choirmaster at St. John's Episcopal Church, as well as the accompanist for the Bangor Area Youth Choir and Mount Desert Summer Chorale. He studied jazz piano at the Berklee College of Music and received his B.M. in Music Education, vocal emphasis, at the University of Maine. He is a member of the American Choral Directors Association and the National Association for Music Education. He resides in Stockton Springs with his wife, Hilary, and his two children, Eric and Ruth.