music, maestro, please! ace orchestral...

MUSIC, MAESTRO, PLEASE! Ace orchestral conductor/arranger, JULES BUCKLEY, previews his upcoming Proms concerts with Jamie Cullum, Quincy Jones and Kamasi Washington.

Written by Charles WaringMonday, 08 August 2016 07:18 - Last Updated Monday, 08 August 2016 07:48

What have Jamie Cullum, Quincy Jones and Kamasi Washington all got in common? Well,besides the fact that they are all noted jazz musicians, of course, they're also connected by theirassociation with JULESBUCKLEY, who will be working alongside them during August as their orchestral conductor. TheLondon-born conductor/arranger, who is the director of the redoubtable Dutch orchestralensemble, METROPOLE ORKEST, is the coolest hot property in pop at the moment. Like a lightning rod, today's most electrifyingacts are drawn to his unique talents. Indeed, his CV reads like a Who's Whoof cutting edge jazz, pop and rock - he's worked with everyone from Laura Mvula, ArcticMonkeys, Lalah Hathaway and Caro Emerald, to Snarky Puppy (with whom he won a Grammyearlier this year) Tori Amos, Razorlight, Emile Sandé, Professor Green and Massive Attack.

The workaholic conductor is currently preparing for a trio of concerts in which he'll conduct threedifferent orchestral ensembles at the Royal Albert Hall. All three performances are scheduled aspart of the current summer season of Sir Henry Wood's famous Promenade concerts (a Britishinstitution that's better known as 'The Proms,' of course). 'The Proms' are almost exclusivelyassociated with classical music but this year jazz is getting a look in.

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On Thursday August 11th, Jules will be leading the Heritage Orchestra (an ensemble that hehelped to establish in 2004) as they accompany British singer/pianist Jamie Cullum. Elevendays later, on Monday August 22nd, Jules gets to work with the bona fide jazz legend that isQuincy Jones, conducting the Metropole Orkest on a varied selection of theproducer/composer's music. When that's finished, Jules has to prepare for a late eveningKamasi Washington gig at the Royal Albert Hall where he'll be waving his baton in front of theCity Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra as they play material from the Americansaxophonist's acclaimed 'Epic' album.

"With these sort of projects you do the rehearsals close to the date of the concert," explains Jules. "For all of these different concerts, the music's being prepared at the moment by thearrangers, myself and different people and then the rehearsals for the Jamie Cullumconcert begins on 10 August, Quincy begins on 18 August and then Kamasi begins on 28August."

The 36-year-old London music maestro - who currently resides in Berlin but works in Hollandmasterminding the Metropole Orkest's activities - also reveals that with one-off concerts likethose that he'll be conducting, there's limited rehearsal time. "It varies but generally youwouldn't get more than about four and most of the time you only get two rehearsals,"he says. To the lay person, perhaps, that situation may sound like it's cutting it a bit fine but asan experienced conductor and arranger, Jules knows what he's doing and makes the necessarypreparations to ensure that everything goes smoothly: "You make a game plan and then you figure out how many minutes you've got and whatyou can get done and then you pitch your battles and then isolate the hardest bits.Obviously everybody's professional and working all the time so the standard is high andit's just a case of making sure that the vibe is right."

In an fascinating conversation with SJF's Charles Waring, Jules Buckley talks not only aboutthe eagerly anticipated Proms concerts but also reflects on his life as a conductor and hisgroundbreaking work with the Metropole Orkest...

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Jamie Cullum's concert is the first of the three at the Proms with the Heritage Orchestra- what will you be doing with him?

We'll be doing a lot of his newest songs and a couple of standards plus a couple of re-workingsof old songs. There will also be several special guests involved in it, but I couldn't say for surewho they are yet (laughs) because I think it's been in flux for the last six months. Sometimes interms of special guests on concerts, those elements often come in close to the date anddepends on the touring schedules of other artists and the management side and all thosethings.

You worked with Jamie previously in 2010 (pictured left) didn't you? What's he like towork with?

He's really, really fun and easy to work with. He's really the most down to earth person you'llprobably ever meet, so that's cool because there are no egos involved.

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You will be conducting the Heritage Orchestra that night. How many people will be in theensemble on stage?

I think on Jamie's concert it will probably be about fifty-five to sixty players. So there will be alarge string orchestra, a big band and then Jamie's own band plus guests and also theRoundhouse Choir.

And then you've got a concert after that was a true bone fide legend, Quincy Jones (left)...

I've met him a few times for this project and in the past. I've been communicating with him andhis team along the way about the program and the guests and how we're going to do it andwhat we're going to do.

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Are you using any of Quincy's original charts or has the music been reconfigured into afresh arrangement for the Proms performance?

It's combination of the two, so some of them will be original charts and some of them will betranscriptions of charts that got lost in European touring in the '60s. Some of them will becompletely new arrangements written for the ensemble on stage. Some pieces, like 'Soul BossaNova,' for example, that's originally a big band chart and it stays quintessentially a big bandchart but there's also a point where the whole orchestra kick in as well.

What else song-wise is in the set?

There's a hell of a lot of stuff. Obviously we'll be touching on his Michael Jackson collaborations,and we'll also be doing stuff from Mirage, a really old movie from about '65. We'll also be doing'They Call Me Mister Tibbs,' and 'Ironside,' and will be touching on his Count Basiecollaborations. We'll also be doing newly written material from Jacob Collier, Alfredo Rodriguezand Richard Bona, who are all Quincy's artists at this point in time.

That sounds fantastic. Are you looking forward to it?

Yes, big time. I'm snatching at every free minute at the moment to try and get the music writtenalong with my colleagues but that's good; sometimes pressure brings out the best results.

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Later in the month you'll be working with Kamasi Washington, who you recentlycollaborated with at the North Sea Jazz Festival (pictured left). This time, though, you'll beusing a different orchestra.

Yeah, so we're going to do things a little bit differently. We talked about it, Kamasi and me, and we're going to gear this concert to the Proms so it's a little bit more acoustical in nature. Therewill be a couple of features within the 65-minute set that will feature the CBSO and Kamasi as asort of duo team. It will be slightly different to the amazing, almost wall of sound approach thatKamasi usually purveys.

What challenges, if any, do one-off concerts like this bring for you as a conductor?

I think that one of the main challenges is that it might be the only time that you play this gig soyou want it to be a memorable occasion. The main challenge is to try and get in the rehearsalsand at the concert the performance to the highest possible standard ever just because you wantto have fun and you want to be inspired and you may never do it again. And then otherchallenges would be to trying to get a real empathic musical feeling between the artist and theorchestra. Another challenge, of course, is the sound challenge; working to the sound of theroom and trying to get the best sound between the ensemble, the monitor guys, the front of thehouse guys and the radio and TV guys.

You've done the Proms before, of course, when you featured at last year's Ibiza Proms,marrying dance music with orchestral sounds...

Yeah, I was responsible for that infamous concert, I have to say. (Laughs).

It's gone down in history, hasn't it? What are your memories of it and what was thatexperience like?

My main memory of that concert was, before the concert, I remember sitting backstage and

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thinking this might be the end of my career, because when I was a teenager I was not a dancemusic aficionado and I just wasn't sure at all how this was going to be greeted by the publicbecause it really was a bit of an experiment. Then we started, the room basically exploded, sothen I knew immediately it was going to be fine and it was quite a cathartic feeling. Two monthsbuildup of stress was released within 30 seconds. It was quite funny actually. So that's my mainmemory and the fact that it obviously resonated with a lot of people in the audience and it wasthe most downloaded Prom ever apparently.

Do you think that it changed a lot of young people's perceptions about what The Promsis about?

I'm not sure, I couldn't say for certain to be honest but hopefully at least some of the people inthat room who may have never been to an orchestral concert before might have gone on tocheck out some classical music in a live situation.

Where did your interest in conducting come from?

When I was a teenager I was writing for brass band and big band a lot. I tried to conduct as ateenager but you're a little bit clueless because no one has ever really shown you the ropes butwhen I got to music college we started doing a couple years of study. Then I set up the HeritageOrchestra and began to conduct that and that was actually the point when I decided to take itseriously. Then I got a couple of different teachers over the years and a lot of it was trial anderror and I'm still learning to be honest. I didn't get serious about it until I was about 24.

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You became the conductor of the Metropole Orkest - how did that come about? Did youhave to audition? How do they go about appointing a conductor?

That's a good question actually. What happens is, at some point you might get invited toconduct an ensemble or conduct a gig and then you'll see whether there's a feeling between thetwo sides as to doing anything more in the future. What often happens with conductors is, if theydo one project then they might do two and if they do two then they might eventually becomewhat they call a guest conductor, so you're doing regular spots with an orchestra over a season.In my case, what happened was, Vince Mendoza had been their chief for about eight years andhe decided that eight years was plenty and stepped down. Then the orchestra's managementasked me whether I would consider taking on the job. I thought about it for awhile and wasn'tsure whether I really wanted to be doing it. Then I took it on and that's that.

What do your responsibilities involve?

I'm co-responsible for the artistic output of the group and that can involve working on theseasonal planning and the program with artistic producers and within that it involvesapproaching artists and talking about concerts and talking about gigs you might want to do orcan we do a gig together and try and make that fit into the diet of the ensemble. You're trying tofind a balanced diet which inspires the group but also keeps them existing. It's very difficult, tobe honest, at the current time because Metropole Orkest is a unique ensemble but financially inthe future it will be less than 50% of the subsidies that it used to have so we need as manypartners and sponsors as we can get really to keep this great canon going.

Is there philosophy that underpins the Metropole and its work?

I suppose its main philosophy is that it's a non-classical orchestra that specializes particularly injazz and pop music. So that's still pretty broad but in terms of a specialty on the pop front, atleast since my own tenure I've been trying to make it more on the younger, up-and-coming andfresh artists on the jazz front. So we try to work with the most cutting-edge and freshest currentartists out there within these two worlds. If you were to sum it up, I suppose you could say thatwas the main mission.

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You won a Grammy earlier this year for your work on Snarky Puppy's 'Sylva' album (pictured left, by Joke Schot)...what did that feel like?

That felt like a 10-year-old when you're playing a football match in a school tournament againstother schools and then you get the winning goal in the 91st minute... And you've lost all controland you're hugging people that you don't know and you become 10 again for a day. It was greatbut also very strange. To be honest, it wasn't something that I'd ever considered in my life.

Congratulations, it's well deserved. Do you find that you have an affinity with SnarkyPuppy because you've recorded and performed with them in concert?

Yeah, definitely, I think a lot of the musicians in that group are of a similar generation to me andto some of the younger players in Metropole and they're basically into a lot of the same musicso when we started hanging out we realised it was a good thing yeah, definitely, I would agree.

You've worked with everyone from the Arctic Monkeys and Professor Green to SnarkyPuppy, José James, Laura Mvula and Massive Attack - which project that you've doneare you most proud of?

It's hard to say in a way because I feel like if I said one project I'm trashing the others but Isuppose the Laura Mvula album (2014's 'Laura Mvula With The Metrople Orkest') and the BBCProms concert we were very proud of. I'd also say, the Snarky Puppy album (last year's 'Sylva'),and we did a project with Giorgio Moroder and the Heritage Orchestra at the Sydney OperaHouse about two or three summers ago. I was also very proud of that. We really pushed out the

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boat in terms of the production and approach to that one.

Looking forward to the future, is there anybody that you'd like to work with that youhaven't done so before?

A new artist called Anohni who's just been nominated for a Mercury so it would be cool to dosomething with her at some point, but I don't know if she's up for doing orchestral projects. Iwould like to do something with as well with Lianne Le Havas.

What about your own musical tastes, Jules? What sort of music do you gravitate to andwhat's been the soundtrack to your life so far?

Cor blimey! That's a hard one to answer, isn't it? When I've got a couple of months off I usuallygo and listen to non-orchestral, non-jazz records. It's probably some sort of necessity to emptythe cache from the brain all over the season and then I will probably start to look into left field,minimalistic electronica and singer-songwriter stuff. Generally I always seem to gravitatetowards that. I also love film scores and I love movies - I suppose I'm a sci-fi geek - so at thesame time I just get into the cinema a lot, though I'm often disappointed by the blockbustermovies. I think independent films are where it's at today in terms of creativity.

Maybe that's because they are able to be uncompromising and avoid the usualHollywood clichés...

Yes, and it's the same with jazz music and contemporary classical music: zero compromise.That means that sometimes it might not work but it also means that if it does work, you're goingto get freaked out at how good it is. I think a lot of people are just scared of putting themselvesas an audience into that position of being challenged and to see what happens to their brainwhen they have to concentrate on a piece for 40 minutes. To see what happens when they'reput in that seat, row 20, and there's no escape. (Laughs) I'm more and more into that but mostlyin pop music it's the same thing as the movies, it's mostly regurgitation really.

It seems there's an aversion, generally, to creative risk-taking in the music industry.

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Yeah, take Laura Mvula's latest album ('The Dreaming Room'). That is an amazing piece ofwork. Zero compromise. In terms of age range she fits into the Radio One bracket but is she onthe Radio One playlist? I don't think so. And we probably know the reason why that is.

She just doesn't fit into Radio One's narrow programming parameters.

Yeah, totally.

Looking ahead beyond these concerts, what else is on the horizon for you? Have you gotany recording sessions or concerts lined up?

Yeah, with Metropole in September we're going to the Musikfest in Bremen which is really good.Traditionally it's a classical music festival but we're going to go there with Christian Scott, thejazz trumpet player. We're also going to be there was Snarky Puppy to present the album thatwe worked on. Then there is actually something a bit different in October, I'm doing a projectwith Henrik Schwarz, who's a German dance music producer but he's definitely much more thanthat. We're putting together a programme for Amsterdam Dance Event which will be premieredin the middle of October with Metropole Orkest.

Catch Jules Buckley at The Royal Albert Hall conductingJamie Cullum (August 11th), Quincy Jones (August 22nd)and Kamasi Washington (August 30th).

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