Zhao Songting was born in 1924, in Dongyang, Zhejiang province. He had a liking for music from his earliest years. He began to learn how to play the bamboo flute at the age of 9, and learned to perform national musical instruments, such as the erhu fiddle, lute, and trichord. When he was 16 years old, he graduated from high school, and attended a training class for Kunqu Opera. Later on, he went to a liberal arts school, and became a music teacher of high school after graduation. At the age of 22, he had to abandon his favorite music career and study law at Shanghai Law School because of his father's demands.

In 1949, Zhao terminated law study with determination, and joined art corps by taking examinations. He not only learned to play several western music instruments, but also learned to compose lyrics and songs. In 1956, Zhao composed a flute solo, called "morning", which was performed at the first session of National Music Week and achieved great success. In 1964, the 5th session of "Shanghai Spring" concert, two of his tunes are performed, which was warmly welcomed by the audience and won praises from experts.

Afterwards, Zhao turned to the technological study of flute. Under the help of his younger brother, Zhao Songling, a physician, he accomplished long-term research and experiments, and finally provides scientific methods for flute producing.

Zhao made great achievements on teaching, and many of his students enjoyed high reputation both in and abroad. Besides, Zhao made two researches: one is the bended flute, which could lengthen the flute without influence the convenience of performance. The other is "parallel flutes", which is also called "wild goose flute". That kind of flute was very beautiful and could only be seen on mural paintings.

In order to better present Zeitgeist, Zhao absorbed the advantages of both "southern genre" and "northern genre", and learned from western flute as well. He finally established "Zhejiang genre", whose style was both strong and gentle. Zhao's art of flute was a system of his own, including performance, composition, teaching, research, and produce.

As to the viewpoint of aesthetics, Zhao proposed, "Musical performance skills served for the presentation of content. Performance skills should be improved, and anything that would be helpful for presenting content should also be absorbed."

Although Zhao never went to music schools, he was profound in literature, science and technology. Therefore, his teaching system was simply and carefully structured. And many of his students achieved success.

Zhao was a hardworking musician, and devoted to national music all his life until his death in Hangzhou in 2001.