The commentator introducing St. Vincent’s orchestral performance for the BBC Proms in September 2025 in London called it “truly a one-off” event.
So it’s not lost on Annie Clark that she’s now taking the idea out on the road for a few concerts this summer, including three this week in Michigan.
“The original thought was I’d do this BBC Proms thing, and that would be really fun,” the Dallas-raised St. Vincent, 43 — who adopted the stage moniker in 2006, before she released her debut album, “Marry Me,” the following year — says via Zoom. “But I had such a wonderful time doing it. I think I’ve used and overused the word ‘glorious,’ because it was. Glorious.
“So I was like: ‘Well, maybe I can do this again — maybe. This is something I would happily take on the road.’ So I am.”
BBC Proms is an annual, eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held mostly in the Royal Albert Hall in central London.
The six-time Grammy Award winner considers the orchestral approach to be a return to part of her musical roots, meanwhile.
Born in Tulsa and relocated to Dallas when she was 7, St. Vincent began playing guitar when she was 12 and roadied as a teenager for her aunt and uncle’s duo, Tuck & Patti. She spent three years at Berklee College of Music in Boston and was part of Polyphonic Spree, Glenn Branca’s 100-guitar orchestra, and Sufjan Stevens’ band before going out on her own.
Annie Clark, known professionally as St. Vincent, is taking her talents on the road for a few concerts this summer, including three in Michigan. (Photo courtesy of OK McCausland)
And the formal aspects of her musical education have not left her.
“I think so much of my early work I always imagined for a full orchestra,” explains St. Vincent, who’s released eight albums, including a 2012 collaboration with David Byrne (“Love This Giant”). “So much of it was kind of inspired by orchestral music, even more so than more recent things. (2009’s) ‘Marrow’ is just, like a love letter to Stravinsky, really. It was just that back then, I simply could only afford, like, one clarinet and a violin back then, not a full orchestra.
“So in a way, doing these orchestral arrangements of songs from every single one of my albums almost felt like kind of a career retrospective. It was a nice way, honestly to reflect and revisit some older things that have a whole lot of merit and kind of intrigue to them. So it was about, ‘How can we make these bigger and grander?’”
The 20 songs for the BBC Proms performance — arranged by conductor Jules Buckley and Rachel Eckroth — are captured on an album “Live in London” and include a first-ever live performance of “We Put a Pearl in the Ground,” along with songs St. Vincent hadn’t performed in many years, such as “Paris is Burning” and “Black Rainbow.” “Obviously, the song selection was the hugest part of it all,” she says. “It was a long and thoughtful process. Obviously them sending me things, me giving my notes, the revisions and the conversations. They did an incredible job.
“It was kind of a long journey to get here, but one really worth it.”
St. Vincent is planning some tweaks for the touring incarnation of the orchestral show. “We definitely told one story with that set in London,” she notes, “so I think we’ll play around a little bit with the story, as it were, just sort of the abstract narrative … and refining the arrangements that got played and definitely zeroing in on getting all the vocal arrangements really tight.
“But, and I don’t mean to sound braggadocious, it’s beautiful to hear an orchestra play these, because the music is beautiful. You don’t need to put a hat on a hat, but it’s certainly a little bit more of a story this way.”
And St. Vincent predicts the orchestral experience will make a mark as she continues working on her next album, a follow-up to 2024’s “All Born Screaming.”
“I’m always working and writing,” she says, “so I think for this go-round, I’ve already kind of switched up my process quite a bit, and I’m hoping that it will yield results that are interesting and heartening to me.
“This orchestra concert and tour has made me look back on previous work that I didn’t look back on before and made me go, ‘Oh, wow, I used to … .’ In some ways, I’m a more refined writer now, but in some ways, I wonder if I lopped off some things that were really interesting that I was doing earlier … just for my own creative curiosity. It’s not as if I lament anything, but it is kind of interesting to go back and go, ‘This (stuff) was really, really weird’ and maybe want to get back in touch with that. We’ll see.”
St. Vincent has three Michigan stops during her summer orchestra tour, including one in metro Detroit. She’ll be at the Detroit Opera House with the Detroit Opera Orchestra on July 24. (Photo courtesy of Andy Paradise)
St. Vincent X Michigan
St. Vincent has three Michigan stops as part of her summer orchestra tour, including (Aroj Aftab opens all shows) …
• Kresge Auditorium, 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 22. 4000 M-137, Interlochen. 231-276-7200 or interlochen.org/events
• Detroit Opera House with the Detroit Opera Orchestra, 7:30 p.m. Friday, July 24. 1526 Broadway St., Detroit. 313-237-7464 or detroitopera.org
• Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park with the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra, 7 p.m. Sunday, July 25. 1000 E. Beltline Ave. NE, Grand Rapids. 616-957-1580 or meijergardens.com