Jules Buckley to conduct his 25th BBC Prom with St. Vincent

Fresh from three 2025 Grammy wins, St. Vincent makes her Proms debut with music described by Buckley as “bold, uncompromising and completely original.” Buckley has long admired her work. “St. Vincent is an artist I’ve loved for a long time. Annie’s records all have songs that grab you the first time you hear them. Feeling the mastery and imagination in her work means something deeper. It takes you on a journey. I naturally gravitate towards artists where no one record sounds the same.”

He continues: “The concept here is not just to slap an orchestral wallpaper behind an artist. Annie and her keys player, Rachel, have toured as a duo, which inspired how we reimagine some of the pieces with a larger ensemble. And Annie is an amazing guitarist. If you hear a track like ‘Now Now’ from her debut record, we have kept a lot of that in there, but we will be expanding into new realms to create something unique. It is about drilling into the detail to understand the music at the deepest level. That is what creates the magic.”

Thanks for a cracking night at the @RoyalAlbertHall the other night. Onto the next with @st_vincent and the Jules Buckley Orchestra on 3rd September! pic.twitter.com/qFockRXaGw

Since making his Proms debut in 2008, his shows have featured Stormzy, Ledisi, Moses Sumney, Cory Henry, Anoushka Shankar, and Arooj Aftab. From the Florence + The Machine Symphonic Night to the Quincy Jones 85th Birthday Prom, his concerts have swung from Ibiza to grime, from psychedelic drone epics with Jon Hopkins to jazz-synth anthems with Jacob Collier, and disco-fuelled tributes to Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin.

Reflecting on this milestone, Buckley says: “When I stepped onto the Proms stage for the first time in 2010, my aim was simple: to open the doors wider. I wanted to create concerts that reflected the music I loved, the world I lived in, and the people I knew it could reach. Twenty-five Proms later, it is humbling to see how much appetite there is for orchestral music that dares to go beyond its comfort zone. Sharing this milestone with St. Vincent, an artist who thrives on risk and reinvention, feels exactly right”.