Jules Buckley: ‘I had a bit of a hybrid musical education’

Two years on from a Prom that reimagined a series of funk tracks whose beats inspired scratch DJs, hip hop and breakdance culture, he and the Heritage Orchestra, in conjunction with percussion duo Ghost-Note, have created a full album, The Breaks, in which they rework the likes of Jerry Lordan’s Apache as well as seminal cuts by James Brown and The Sugarhill Gang.

“The thing with the BBC concerts is often by the nature of these gigs they go on the radio for 30 days or something and you never see or hear of them again,” says Buckley via Zoom from Berlin. “We really loved the project and we feel that there is this underground worldwide scene with an appreciation of this music, particularly with reference to the breaking crews, and we wanted to try to put it on record and try to help and support more awareness to that scene.”

He points to breakbeat pioneers such as Clyde Stubblefield, drummer with James Brown’s band, who “set the tone for what would go on to be the most sampled pieces in the history of music”.

“Further down the field from those original guys dropping those records at block parties would come the idea of, ‘let’s take the best part of this record and loop it and let’s freestyle over the top of that’ and it’s a very clear path, you can see the emergence and development of the music,” he says.

“The feelgood factor of those beats and the infectious nature of it that are essentially a core component of a global phenomenon, so that’s cool. Obviously hip-hop is massive now and super broad so I can only talk about the core seeds in regards to this record.”

Now 41, Buckley recalls spending hours as a teenager digging through boxes of records in charity shops in Aylesbury in search of funk and disco gems from the 60s and 70s, adding: “Like many people that collect records, I suppose that starts to become an obsession.”

The habit has stayed with him, especially, he says, “trying to find that track that you don’t think anyone else has got is fun and you can find so much inspiring music in the nooks and crannies of these shops”, even if such finds are harder to come in an age of Google searches. “That’s sort of taken away a bit of the delight in uncovering this music that you didn’t necessarily know so much about,” he laments. “I felt like you really cherished records that you could pick up more than the listening habits of today where we cycle quickly between tracks online.”

A stellar cast of guests on the album includes saxophonist Kamasi Washington and singer-songwriter and keyboard player Cory Henry, both of whom Buckley has worked with before on their own music. “I think that they’re two giants of the current times and they were both really up for it,” he says.

The album is designed to be listened to like a mixtape. The next step, Buckley hopes, will be to take it on the road with the orchestra augmented by breakdancers.

“By the nature of that original concert we put together, we had a couple of local London breaking crews involved,” he says. ”In an ideal world we would try to set it up so that we would incorporate crews wherever we may be, which would make sense with the whole history and story of the music and its relation to the social scene.”

Since co-founding the Heritage Orchestra with Chris Wheeler in 2004, Buckley has helped to transform the orchestral repertoire, with others following in his stead. His desire, he says, has always been to pursue projects “that I really felt were important to me, musically speaking”.

“I suppose I had a bit of a hybrid musical education, drawing inspiration and information from different parts of musical sphere, so to me everything makes sense why I’m doing what I’m doing and the Heritage has done what it’s done, but I don’t know whether we’ve ever been on a mission. I just feel that people have taken up that message and run with it in the press and stuff,” he adds.

“I love classical music with a deep passion and I strongly believe it should be cherished and looked after, but I also believe orchestras have a responsibility to promote new music. I believe that they have always done that but there’s nothing wrong with a little shove from time to time to help that cause.”

Among Buckley’s largest and most high profile undertakings were Proms celebrating the music of Quincy Jones and Scott Walker. He says both were “a real gift and privilege to be a part of”, remembering that the famously enigmatic Walker “even came to the pub after the gig – no one noticed but he was there”.

“It’s hard to put into words in one answer those two projects because I ended up spending so much time on them and digging so deep into the music of both of these great artists that at a certain point you start to lose your mind because they’ve got so much music,” he says.

“Even with some of the interviews with Scott at the time you could tell that some people had only listened to the Walker Brothers so the angle of the interview would often start with that, but actually that stuff had nothing to do with his solo stuff. I think what was interesting about the Scott gig was that he never went back and we were providing a snapshot of these solo records, roughly Scott 1 to 3. He’d never listened to them since, he’d never performed them, so that in a way was actually going against Scott’s philosophy and the fact that he was open to that was really cool.

“Quincy was and is one of my biggest inspirations, he’s as relevant now as he was in the 50s, which is kind of crazy. You can’t really say there are many artists that have that big an impact.”

Buckley returns to the Proms on Saturday, conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s collaboration with the genre-defying singer Moses Sumney. He says he was introduced to Sumney’s music five years ago by the producer John Calvert.

“People are always looking to put music into boxes and categorise things and I think what stands out about Moses, amongst many accolades, is that you cannot categorise him as a person, as an artist, as a spirit,” he says. “He is off the hook and it’s a challenge as well. The production on his records is so detailed, it’s extremely thought out, and the lyrical message is just so poetic that I fell in love with his music and finally we were able to work together with the support of the BBC Proms. It’s really exciting that we can do this.”

The Breaks is out on Decca Records on September 3. www.julesbuckley.com