At the RCM he was awarded the August Mannes and Constant & Kit Lambert prizes for conducting.
Initially he worked as a repetiteur in the opera houses in Innsbruck, Nuremberg and Mannheim as well as being an assistant conductor at the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden and Freiburg.
As a composer David Robert Coleman did some work with Wolfgang Rihm in Karlsruhe and Hans Zender in Freiburg.
In 2001 he was a winner in the Frankfurt Opera's competition 'Five Movements' and received a composers' residency in Schloss Solitude Stuttgart.
[1] From 2010 to 2018 he worked as a conductor, composer and pianist at the Berlin State Opera under Daniel Barenboim.