Interview: Jules Buckley
The Heritage Orchestra, co-founded by Jules Buckley
Grammy award-winning British conductor Jules Buckley is a pioneering genre alchemist and agitator of musical convention, pushing the boundaries of almost all musical genres. He is the Co-Founder of the Heritage Orchestra, the orchestra that rocks out the UK’s biggest arenas including The O2 and Manchester Arena with Ibiza Classics (orchestral arrangements of DJ Pete Tong’s dance music). Buckley has also conducted 15 BBC Proms over the past nine years, including the Grime Symphony, the Quincy Jones Prom and A Homage to Nina Simone. His collaboration list is bursting with hot names: Stormzy, Arctic Monkeys, Dizzee Rascal, Jacob Collier and The Cinematic Orchestra.
Buckley has said in the past “I hope to continue to innovate and challenge the stereotypes of what orchestral music should be” and “it doesn’t matter if genres seemingly clash, if the concept is strong, you can make anything happen”. I was pleased to get the chance to chat with him during lockdown about resistance to modern collaborations within the classical music industry and being the underdog.
There can be a lot of resistance within the classical music sector to anything that isn’t a traditional classical concert, the kind of modern collaborations that you lead. How much opposition do you encounter and how much do you let that hold you back?
It's a good question and it's something that's always there but the honest truth is that it doesn’t affect me at all. It’s just fear of the unknown, like when Django Bates, one of the foremost British jazz composers, went to the Royal College of Music in the early 80s and there was a sign on the piano that said 'no jazz to be played on this piano'. We should always be moving forward with our artistic visions and you can't stop that. You should embrace it and go with it and see what incredible experiences you'll have.
We as listeners and concert-goers are always searching for different things. No-one owns this music, no-one owns this music experience. I often feel that the rituals and the etiquette of concerts could definitely be messed with and freshened up without worrying about the kind of reaction to it.
Something I’m regularly asked is whether the gigs I promote are a gateway to going to a ‘real’ orchestral concert (presented conventionally). I imagine you get this too. How do you respond?
If people go and check out other music afterwards that involves orchestras, awesome, because orchestras worldwide are killing it and there's so much music to listen to, so why not? But that shouldn't be the aim. I think to really go in on something and to give the audience a meaningful experience, it should only be about that performance that night, not about what might happen afterwards.
Right now the scene is so amazing and so undefined that you can't really define what's going on. That's something really beautiful and it's something that shouldn't have to be defended. It should be cherished, because not all countries are necessarily as on the front foot as the UK is right now in terms of contemporary music with large ensembles. We're really all over it, I think.
Have you performed in weird and wonderful spaces? What has been the reaction?
I’ve done a lot of weird venues: a steel factory just outside Krakow with the Cinematic Orchestra, orchestral gigs in football stadiums, clubs (I started the Heritage Orchestra in Cargo in Shoreditch), on a boat, in the middle of an airfield, an aquarium in a zoo, self-built stages in industrial wastelands... Whenever an audience comes to those types of gigs I've never really seen or witnessed anything other than a really positive reaction to this kind of unusual set-up. A typical response is “I never expected this” or “Wow, I was really mesmerised by the players”. There’s always a space for that.
“Taking music out of schools is the worst thing the government could do”
You’ve introduced the big orchestral sound to new audiences so I wonder how you think we can do that on a bigger scale with classical music to reach a younger, broader and more diverse audience?
It’s got to start at a grassroots level. The first thing we've got to do is make sure that kids from every background have access to instruments and good teaching facilities. That seems to have diminished so badly in the UK. When I grew up I had a council music service and they lent you the instrument, so that’s how I started the trumpet. How can you get inspired about a scene and the music if it's not accessible to you and there’s not the resources to start? Most classical musicians in the UK are white middle class and up because they’ve had the support and the facilities to do it. To reset the balance the government's got to do something about it, and taking music out of schools is the worst thing they could do.
I read that you like to be the underdog. What do you mean by that?
I think it’s just part of my personality. Often when people don't think something isn’t going to succeed, that’s when I thrive. If there’s scepticism and doubt, then I can feel like I can really do that thing. Looking at it a different way it’s easy to get complacent. I’ve been lucky enough to appear at the Proms for the last five or six years and when you’re lucky enough to have that chance, it’s easy to let your standards drop and not care as much. I like to always remind myself about what I wanted to do when I was 20 and keep that at the heart of what I’m doing rather than letting things go to my head. I think the only thing that counts is what you're saying on stage, not gongs or awards. So I like to remind myself that I've still got work to do.
How do you feel when you’re about to go on stage, say before conducting at the BBC Proms or an Ibiza Classics show? Do nerves affect you?
I have a kind of ritual. Depending on how complex the gig is, I normally have to go and run around in advance of the gig, maybe a couple of hours before because I need to get out the nervous energy. I tend to try not to hang in with anybody in the green room before the gig. I like to be in my little world. I learned that was the best way for me to make sure that I’m in control. As long as you're prepared and you've not left any stone unturned, then the nerves become almost like a friend - they become nervous excitement rather than nervous dread.
And how about during the concert? Do you reach flow state?
Yeah, if I'm in a performance and I start to think ahead, it's a dangerous place to go, so I try to stay in the present, which in a way is also a meditative thing. I guess all musicians try to get into the zone where we're all connected on another level. It sounds a bit silly but I think it's true. You hit a part of the musical experience where you are out of body a little bit. And that's why it's crazy right now, because we don't have the audience to share that with.
Do you think that will make it harder to reach that state at the moment when you’re conducting to an empty hall?
It will be harder for us to really bring it. But we, as a family of players, also need to express ourselves and we haven’t had any gigs in months, so in some ways there will be an energy that isn’t necessarily normally there in a concert. So I think we will tap into that instead.
Speaking of the pandemic: during this time a lot of people in the music industry have been thinking about changing career or retraining (64% according to Encore Musicians). If you were to do something else, what would it be?
It would have to be something really fun. When I was a kid I wanted to be a stunt man. Now I’m getting on a bit, probably the bones wouldn't take those falls, so perhaps I could be a stunt man coordinator.
Watch Jules Buckley’s latest 2020 BBC Prom, Anoushka Shankar and Gold Panda, on BBC iPlayer now or listen to him presenting BBC Radio 3’s Classical Fix, the podcast for classical newbies. You can follow him @julesbuckleymusic on Instagram and @julesbuckley on Twitter, or follow the Heritage Orchestra @heritageorchestra.
Hannah Fiddy is a creative entrepreneur based in Bristol, developing new audiences for classical music. She is the Co-Founder of Alternative Classical and the creator of Humans of Classical Music and Concert Roulette. Hannah interviews prominent artists from around the world and writes articles about classical music.
Follow Hannah on Twitter @Hannah_Fiddy.