Heritage Orchestra collaborates with present-day artists from the mainstream and experimental worlds of art and music; challenging orchestral stereotypes, encouraging new work, and engaging the public through relevance, risk, and reinvention.

From 2004 the Heritage Orchestra has grown from a London club-night into a professional orchestra that commands some of the biggest live venues in the UK. It records regularly with new and established artists, and likes to work in unexpected genre-defying ways; introducing diverse audiences to a new type of orchestra.

The group believes in drawing influence from current art and music, getting its inspiration from today’s scenes, and unashamedly hooking up with sub-cultural trends and the latest technologies. By absorbing what the creative world offers now, the Heritage Orchestra relies not on the historical significance of ‘repertoire’, but on the potential of discovering new experiences for artists and the public. The orchestra has always aimed to work with artists that might not necessarily have worked with an orchestra before. When devising programmes they look towards unlikely cohorts that stretch from electronica, dance-music, folk, rock, dubstep, hip-hop, jazz and contemporary classical.

“When a producer is to be rendered by the Heritage Orchestra, you know the transition will be a smooth one” - International DJ Magazine

Musical Director Jules Buckley and Artistic Director Chris Wheeler have created an orchestra that is a team of skilled and reliable musicians who share an understanding. Anyone who works with the Heritage Orchestra is usually seeking an antidote to the standard modes of practice. The musicians, composers, and orchestrators, are open-minded, pro-active, technically adept, flexible, positive, with skills and experiences that extend the orchestras reach.

Increasingly, the orchestra performs using amplification, sound design, and other creative technologies that provide more layers to consider amidst the existing strings, brass, woodwind, percussion, and rhythm section. The forty-piece ensemble nearly always performs using sound reinforcement, allowing for more flexibility and combinations of sounds. And only by employing some of the finest sound engineers in the UK are these technical and musical demands met.

Successes in the past have included the realisation of Vangelis’s Blade Runner soundtrack for Massive Attack’s Meltdown Festival at the Royal Festival Hall.

“The smoky, futuristic world of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner was brought viscerally to life... a stunning display of musical performance by the Heritage Orchestra... Blade Runner has been done on stage before, but I don’t think any of those interpretations would stand up to what took place at Meltdown last night; it was simply extraordinary” - Music from the Movies *****

In only six weeks the entire Blade Runner performance was made a reality with a highly skilled team of orchestrators, fastidious synthesiser programmers, technical crew, and visual input from the United Visual Artists.

A ten-date tour with the Bays was another instance where the orchestra excelled. Backed by the Bays, music was composed in real-time by a pair of composers who transmitted the spontaneously written parts to the orchestral player’s LCD screens. Conductor Jules Buckley then chose when certain passages were played and in a remix capacity formed the structure of the total improvisation. This was a unique orchestral and compositional improvisation that drew large audiences across the UK.



A further triumph was the reinterpretation of electronic production outfit UNKLE. The orchestra was invited to develop and rework UNKLE’s music for a one-off concert at the Union Chapel that included a visual installation by Warren Du Preez and Nick Thornton Jones. Employing four composers the orchestra presented a large-scale new orchestral version of the album ‘End Titles...’ Heritage Orchestra have recently recorded the orchestral arrangements for UNKLES 2010 album.

Other projects of note have included two appearances on the BBC Electric Proms with Dizzee Rascal and The Streets, a groundbreaking collaboration with beatboxer ‘Beardyman’, a film soundtrack for Tony Kaye, a concerto with DJ Yoda, an unusual realisation of music from The Clangers plus Russ Garcia’s Fantastica – Music From Outer Space, work with Amon Tobin, Deodato, Airto Moreira, Plaid, Stan Sulzmann, plus new relationships created with singer- songwriter Jonathan Jeremiah, Razorlight, Arctic Monkeys, and more. All of which have seen the orchestra develop its recording session portfolio, which is another creative strand to secure the orchestras continued existence.

The orchestra is proud to be current resident artists at the UK’s most iconic Modernist arts venue, the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, where they are undertaking a three-year programme of activity. This hugely significant partnership will further establish the Heritage Orchestra and create many creative opportunities. The ‘DEBUT’ programme, is focussed upon research, collaborations, commissions, performances, and seeks to harness experimental cross media practice. There will be potential for national and international artists to engage their ideas with the orchestra, venue, and other artists, and to work in ways they never thought possible.

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