VIEW ALL NEWS

28 October 2026 - Colonel David Barringer MVO MBE our new Professional Conductor

Lydbrook Band is delighted to announce the appointment of Colonel David Barringer MVO MBE as its new Professional Conductor, marking his return to competitive brass banding as he prepares to conclude a distinguished 37-year career in British Army Music.

The appointment brings together a conductor whose recent career has operated at the highest levels of British musical and ceremonial life with a band possessing both a strong family identity and a clear ambition for the future.

For Barringer, it also marks a significant return to the musical world in which his own career began. Having risen to the very top of Army Music, his recent appointments have placed him at the centre of some of the most significant national occasions of a generation. His work has included musical direction and senior leadership for the State Funeral of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, the Coronation of Their Majesties King Charles III and Queen Camilla, the Coronation Concert and numerous other major State and national events.
As he approaches retirement from military service, however, his attention is increasingly returning to brass banding - and to the challenge of bringing the experience gained over nearly four decades of professional music-making back to the movement.

“Brass bands gave me my musical foundations and I have always retained a huge affection for the movement. As I reach the end of my Army career, the opportunity to become properly involved in banding again feels both exciting and very natural. I am certainly not looking at retirement as a moment to slow down musically. I feel energised, ambitious and perhaps better equipped than I have ever been to explore what I can achieve as a conductor.”

Barringer has recently worked as Guest Conductor with the National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain and, in the summer, he completed his first International Brass Band Summer School as Course Director, working alongside leading conductors, soloists and musicians from across the international brass band community.

His appointment at Lydbrook now marks a return to the weekly rehearsal room and to the particular musical demands of developing a competitive brass band. “There is something unique about banding. You build a sound together over time. You develop players, create an identity and establish a collective understanding of what you want to achieve. I have missed that process enormously. What attracted me to Lydbrook was that I immediately recognised a group of people with whom I wanted to do that.”

The musical relationship has developed through Barringer's recent work with the band and revealed a shared approach to music-making and ambition. “Lydbrook has a wonderful family atmosphere. People care about the band, they care about each other and there is a genuine sense of belonging. I value that enormously. But there is ambition here too. The band wants to develop, it wants to challenge itself and it has aspirations to compete successfully at Championship Section level. That combination of people, values and ambition is incredibly attractive to me. The best musical organisations I have known throughout my career have combined exceptionally high standards with a strong sense of identity and purpose. That is what we want to build upon at Lydbrook.”

Barringer's return comes more than two decades after he last established himself on the competitive brass band conducting scene, including representing Great Britain at the inaugural European Conductor of the Year competition. The intervening years have brought a breadth of musical and leadership experience rarely encountered within the brass band movement: conducting professional musicians internationally, leading some of the Army's foremost musical organisations and carrying musical responsibility for performances witnessed by audiences of hundreds of millions around the world.

It is that accumulated experience that he is now looking forward to applying in a very different musical environment.
“The scale may be different, but many of the principles are exactly the same. It is about people, preparation, trust, musical conviction and creating an environment in which talented musicians can perform at their very best. I've learned an enormous amount about those things during my Army career, particularly when preparing performances where the expectation, scrutiny and pressure were at the very highest level. I'm fascinated to see what that experience can bring to a brass band rehearsal room.”

For Lydbrook, the appointment comes with a clear shared aspiration: to develop the band musically, build consistency and confidence, and pursue its ambition to establish itself at Championship Section level without losing the character and community that define it.

For Barringer, that challenge is precisely the attraction. “I want us to be ambitious. I want players to look forward to rehearsals because they know they are going to be challenged, developed and inspired. I want us to perform repertoire that stretches us, create performances that people remember and see just how good we can become. I've been privileged to enjoy an extraordinary career in Army Music and to conduct on occasions that I will never forget. But I still have a huge appetite to make music, to work with talented and committed musicians and to keep developing myself as a conductor. There is a real sense of coming full circle. Brass bands were where my journey started. Now, after everything that has happened in between, I'm enormously excited to be back - and particularly excited about what we can achieve together at Lydbrook.”

Speaking on behalf of Lydbrook Band, Robert Morgan, the band’s secretary, said “It will be a great privilege for us to have David in our band room working with us on concert and contest music during the coming months. This a long-term project for the band and not a quick fix and therefore this work will continue up until next year’s regional championships and beyond. Our ambition is to compete at the highest level in the championship section and it’s encouraging that David has recognised what we have here in Lydbrook. At the top of the list is friendship, support and ambition. Working alongside this will be our thriving Training Band where the grass roots of Lydbrook band will remain firmly set in our village”