| Biography | A non-classical conductor, composer and musical director, Jules Buckley has collaborated with some of the UK's biggest artists, from Arctic Monkeys to Basement Jaxx and Professor Green, reworking their most famous tracks for orchestral gigs, tours and albums. In 2011, the 55-piece Heritage Orchestra, which Buckley co-founded while in his final year at the Guildhall School of Music and started as a club night in Shoreditch, toured with the comedian Tim Minchin.
Principal guest conductor of the Metropole Orchestra in Holland, The Heritage Orchestra in the UK, and Berlin. He grew up in Buckinghamshire, and studied at the Guildhall School of Music, where he realised that writing music and leading ensembles interested him more. He switched courses to do a degree in composition, setting up the Heritage Orchestra on the side as an outlet for his own music.
Within a year, they'd caught the attention of Radio 1 DJ Gilles Peterson, who invited them to play a session at the Maida Vale studio and go with him to the Montreux Jazz Festival.
Rocking out is something that Buckley does well, whether it's with The Heritage Orchestra performing Massive Attack's soundtrack to Blade Runner at the Southbank's Meltdown Festival as he did in 2008, or conducting the Metropole alongside Basement Jaxx last year. "People think that if you take an orchestra and slap a beat on top of it that it's really cool, but it's just obvious and clichéd. What we wanted to do with Basement Jaxx was to take their dance-based ideas and put them in an orchestral context," recalls Buckley, recreating the beat for their "Bingo Bango" song across the table. "We made it into a Viennese Waltz for the simplest reason: why the hell not?" So in Buckley's hands, "Red Alert" became a mock-Hollywood piece and the New Orleans Mardi Gras groove in "Do Your Thing" was transformed into a big band belter.
Along with wanting to do all he can to move away from any kind of orchestral formalities, Buckley is also passionate about volume. "When the Metropole did the Basement Jaxx gig we amped up every instrument on stage and pumped it through a massive sound system. Felix and Simon from Basement Jaxx mixed alongside the orchestra and what you got was the gig that audiences had been waiting for an orchestra to do from the beginning of time. You need to get proper volume, so you boost it right up; then you've got a show." And although he briefly considers his ideal world as "sitting on a rock writing my own stuff," he also says that he loves the craft of going into the studio with an orchestra and the challenge of having "three hours to get a track nailed."
A self-confessed music obsessive, when he isn't buying or listening to music or going to concerts, he's happiest playing football and supporting his beloved Manchester City. He comes across as easy going yet infectiously enthusiastic, so it's easy to imagine how he might put both an orchestra and an artist who is out of their comfort zone, at ease. He names many of his experiences as highlights, from working with Beardyman to Jamie Cullum ("you could definitely go out and get trashed with him") and there's much more in the pipeline. The Heritage Orchestra are preparing for a Joy Division gig at the Brighton Dome in May. He's also partnering with Brit group Fink on a concert with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam in April and is starting work on Paolo Nutini's next album imminently. His list of upcoming projects sound exciting, if mildly exhausting. Are there any other artists in his sights? "I'd like to do something really earth shattering with David Bowie in front of the pyramids. If you don't ask, you don't get, right?" |