Skidmore was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to choral music. Skidmore is a pioneer in the field of research and performance of neglected choral works of the 16th to 18th centuries, and, in particular, has won wide acclaim for his recordings of French and Latin American Baroque music with Ex Cathedra for Hyperion Records. An honorary fellow at the Birmingham Conservatoire and a research fellow at the University of Birmingham, he has worked with many leading musicologists to prepare new performing editions of French, Italian and Spanish music by Giovanni Animuccia, Juan de Araujo, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Michel Richard Delalande, Claudio Monteverdi and Jean-Philippe Rameau. Active in music education, Skidmore is Artistic Director of Early Music and the Capelle Baroque Orchestra of the Birmingham Conservatoire, and director of Ex Cathedra's wide-reaching education programme. He frequently gives choral training workshops and teaches at summer schools in the UK and overseas. He has regularly directed the choral programme at Dartington International Summer School and was Classical Music Programmer for the 2005 Kilkenny Arts Festival.