After postgraduate studies at the City University and the Guildhall Hall School of Music & Drama and a period of teaching, David held positions with two major music publishers, Schott and OUP. Here he developed close working relationships with some of the most important composers of our time, including Tippett, Ligeti, Dutilleux, Penderecki, Shchedrin, Eben and Henze. After moving to OUP in 2008, David worked with Sir John Rutter, Bob Chilcott, Gerald Barry, Michael Berkeley, Cecilia McDowall, Howard Skempton and Gabriel Jackson, whose music he has continued to champion as a performer.
David was appointed Music Director of the Addison Singers in 1996 and conducted almost all the choirs London concerts until he stepped down as Music Director at the end of 2022. Under David’s direction the choir also sang on tour in the USA, Austria, Ireland, Scotland, Poland, Spain, France, Italy and Hungary, singing in venues such as Carnegie Hall (New York), St Stephen’s Cathedral (Vienna), Salzburg Cathedral, St Stephen’s Cathedral (Budapest), Montserrat Basilica, the Madeleine (Paris), and the cathedrals of Truro, Cork and Kilkenny. Aside from a large amount of standard repertoire, David’s programmes with the Addison Singers included a great deal new music, often written especially for the choir – Cecilia McDowall, Gabriel Jackson, Howard Goodall, Bob Chilcott, Howard Skempton, William Bolcom, Jill Jarman, David Matthews, Edwin Roxburgh, Michael Berkeley, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Gavin Bryars and Peter Dickinson, all wrote especially for the Addison choirs. In 2022, the then Master of the King’s Music, Dame Judith Weir, wrote a substantial new choral / orchestral work, ‘O Sweet Spontaneous Earth’ for David’s last concert with the Addison Choirs, dedicating it to David.
In January 2012 David lead over 150 singers in a highly successful Singing-Day, focusing on Howard Goodall’s ‘Eternal Light’, given in the presence of the composer. This was followed by a Singing Day featuring the music of Morten Lauridsen (with the composer himself at the piano) and ‘Come & Sing Events’ based around ‘Eternal Light’ and the Mozart Requiem for ‘Singing for Syrians’ in London and at Dorchester Abbey. In 2018 David conducted a ‘Come & Sing’ event focused on American music (for St John’s Smith Square), a ‘Come and Sing Parry’ to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the death of the great English composer (St Paul’s, Covent Garden), the Bach ‘Magnificat’ at King’s Place (London), and at the beginning of 2020 two ‘Come and Sing’ events focussing on the Vivaldi ‘Gloria’ and Goodall’s ‘The Gravity of Kindness’.
David has had a close association with King’s Place in London – playing an important part in a celebration their celebration of Percy Grainger in 2011, following this with a concert with the Gavin Bryars Ensemble (part of the award-winning ‘Minimalism Unwrapped’ series) in 2014 and a celebration of Howard Skempton’s 70th birthday in 2017.
David has conducted and adjudicated in Hungary, Cuba, Mexico, Austria, France, Ireland, Poland, Spain, Italy, and throughout the US, holding residencies at the Universities of Syracuse, Iowa, Rhode Island, North Carolina, Michigan, Michigan State and Queen’s, New York, and has lead pre-concert lectures/interviews for the Kennedy Centre, the Lincoln Centre, the Juilliard School and Opera Theatre St Louis. He has addressed conferences and given workshops at the Universities of Aberdeen, York, the UST Conservatoire in Manilla (where he also conducted a concert with the Philippine Philharmonic) and the Chopin University in Warsaw.
In 2013 David acted as Artistic Director of ‘Singing Shakespeare’, a major project focusing on choirs the world over singing new and existing settings of the Bard. The launch concert was at Holy Trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon and lead further Shakespeare related workshops for the Brandenburg Choral Festival (London), the Association of British Choral Directors (Cardiff), the Cork International Choral Festival and Sound (Scotland), that featured repertoire from his Shakespeare Choral Anthology, published by Novello in 2015. David’s other publications include articles on American and Polish music, a celebration of John Joubert’s 90th and Howard Skempton’s 70th birthdays, memorial tributes to his friends Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, Alun Hoddinott and John McCabe, and a major two-part article on the choral music of Vaughan Williams for ‘Choir & Organ’. His two anthologies of new Christmas Carols by over thirty leading composers were published by Cadenza-Wise Music and he has made several choral/orchestral reductions and arrangements, including pieces by Judith Weir and the late Stephen Sondheim, which were published with the support of the original composers. David’s book, ‘Giving Voice to My Music’ (24 interviews with composers of choral music) was published by Kahn and Averill in August 2021 and launched at the Three Choirs Festival. Another new book ‘The Music of Gavin Bryars’, was published at the end of 2023, again by Kahn & Averill, to celebrate the composers 80th birthday. More recently, Schott have published the first of three new anthologies of choral music by Percy Grainger that David has edited, and Boosey & Hawkes will launch a new collection of choruses from operas by Benjamin Britten that David has adapted for concert performance. He an External Reader for University of York Music Press, advising on the expansion of their catalogue of works by living composers.
In 2016 David conducted the Marian Consort and the Berkeley Ensemble in a revival of Sir Lennox Berkeley’s ‘Stabat Mater’ – performing the work at the Aldeburgh Easter Festival, the Spitalfields Festival (for a BBC broadcast) and the Cheltenham International Festival, also recording the work for Delphian Records, a CD that was critically acclaimed and was short-listed for a Gramophone Award. 2016 also saw a 90th birthday concert for the late Joseph Horovitz with the Addison Singers and East London Brass (Cadogan Hall), at which David conducted Horovitz’s dramatic Cantata for chorus and brass band, ‘Samson’. 2018 saw the 100th anniversary of the birth of Leonard Bernstein and to celebrate this occasion, David curated a year-long festival of American music at Smith Square, London, and appeared as both pianist and conductor. The year included some 80 concerts between January-December 2018, a day of performances on July 4th and over a week of concerts in mid-October, featuring amateur choirs and orchestras, alongside many soloists of international standing. In July 2018 David lead a performance of the iconic ‘Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet’ by Gavin Bryars at the Three Choirs Festival, involving over 100 amateur singers and players. Later that year he conducted orchestral concerts (music by Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, and young composers), at the Concertgebouw (Amsterdam) and Musikverein (Vienna). He has served on several musical foundations – a Trustee of the William Alwyn Foundation, the Bliss Trust, both Vice-Chair and Chair of the Lennox Berkeley Society and for several years has been Director of The John Ireland Trust.
The 22-23 season included his final four concerts as Music Director of the Addison Singers, as well as directing an English Choral Music Weekend in Vienna that culminated in a concert in St Stephen’s Cathedral, and a UK tour of Walton’s ‘Façade’ (to celebrate the works 100th anniversary), a project that reunited David with the Berkeley Ensemble. In December 2023 David made his debut at London’s Barbican Hall before a capacity audience, conducting an 80th birthday concert for Gavin Bryars, with the Addison Chamber Choir and an enlarged Gavin Bryars Ensemble.
David’s recent performances have included the Faure Requiem in London and at the Madeleine in Paris (Faure’s own church), to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the composer’s death in November 2024 (a project repeated in 2025), Handel’s ‘Messiah’ (with 180 singers from ten countries and the Wiener Domorchester), at St Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna, and choral music by Ireland, Stanford and Britten on Jersey, in the Channel Islands. Later in 2025 David directed a series of popular choral workshops in London, working with living composers (Cecilia McDowall, Howard Goodall and Dame Judith Weir) on their music and the curation of a British Music Festival in Warsaw, held at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music and Praga Cathedral. Early 2026 saw series of staged performances of Carlisle Floyd’s opera ‘Susannah’ with Kennet Opera and workshops with student composers at the Royal Academy of Music in London, leading to a concert with the New London Chamber Choir and RIOT Ensemble, that also included Feldman’s ‘Rothko Chapel’.
Looking further ahead, there are plans to return to Kennet Opera for performances of Britten’s ‘Albert Herring’, performing and recording projects around the music of Gavin Bryars, Howard Skempton and Betsy Jolas with the New London Chamber Choir, concerts to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the death of Beethoven in London, Edinburgh and Vienna, a Second British Music Festival in Warsaw, and further performances in Guernsey, Paris and Vienna.
Alongside his work as a performer, David recently began work on a new authorised biography of Sir William Walton.
May 2026