SAN DIEGO — How is six-time 2025 Grammy Award-winner St. Vincent upping her creative game after high-profile collaborations with everyone from David Byrne, Nirvana and Taylor Swift to Fiona Apple, Sufjan Stevens and Dua Lipa?

Cue up the orchestra — literally — for this acclaimed musical polymath and Texas native (real name: Annie Clark). St. Vincent’s 15-city summer tour finds her collaborating with the San Diego Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony and other leading orchestras.

“It’s thrilling!” she said, speaking from her Los Angeles home last week. “So much of the music that I was writing, especially on my early early records, was so inspired by orchestral music, 19th and 20th century orchestral music. So, to actually hear it played (now), as it was intended, is amazing.”

Exactly how amazing is vividly captured on St. Vincent’s wonderfully audacious new double-album with the Jules Buckley Orchestra, “Live in London! (BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall).”

A career-spanning opus that showcases her increasingly assured singing and guitar work, it features freshly reimagined versions of pieces from her earliest and most recent studio albums — 2007’s “Marry Me” to 2024’s “All Born Screaming” — and various points in between. The arrangements bring added depth and resonance to such standout St. Vincent songs as “Smoking Section,” “Marrow,” “Violent Time” and “Digital Witness,” whose sharply honed lyrics lament the increasingly soul-sapping impact of social media.

The delicate nuances, contrapuntal percussive accents and bold orchestral flourishes expand the emotional and textural dimensions of her work. The arrangements are by such simpatico collaborators as veteran St. Vincent band keyboardist Rachel Eckroth, Sam Gale, Peter Riley, Jochen Neuffer, Tom Trapp and orchestra leader Buckley, who is also serving as the conductor on this tour.

Buckley is the creative-artist-in-residence with London’s BBC Symphony Orchestra and the principal guest conductor of the Netherlands’ genre-blurring Metropole Orkest. His previous credits include orchestral collaborations with Tori Amos, Massive Attack, Arctic Monkeys, Paul Weller, Velvet Underground co-founder John Cale, former San Diego singer Gregory Porter and more.

“This whole thing came together because of my involvement playing with Rachel Eckroth and her friendship with Jules, who’s such an incredible conductor and also arranger,” St. Vincent said. “We had been talking about doing something with the BBC Proms for a couple years, and it finally was the right time.”

A bold reinvention

It is clear St. Vincent relishes the opportunity to explore new artistic terrain by revisiting — and reinventing — her shape-shifting songs anew. With nearly a dozen solo albums to her credit, there were many options to consider for inclusion on “Live in London!” Narrowing them down to the 19 selections featured on the album required careful consideration.

“I would say the process was first, of course, the song selection,” she said, “and what story do you want to tell? What songs (are in) the back catalog that maybe haven’t been touched in a while, that could use a dusting off and a re-presenting?

“Rachel and Jules divided up the songs to arrange, and then they would send me mini-arrangements of things, and I would make notes and send it back. On some songs, I would say I had a lot of notes. And on other songs, I had very few notes and just kind of blessed it. My favorite arrangements are the ones that Rachel had a hand in. We’ve been playing together now for about five years, and I think she just knocked it out of the park with these arrangements.”

Perhaps coincidentally, St. Vincent’s official foray into the world of orchestral music was followed by her performing — “in a tiny, tiny cameo appearance — early this year in a New York production of Richard Foreman’s surrealistic opera, “What to Wear.”

“That just really opened my eyes to to the to the world of opera the work ethic of opera singers, and just how incredible they are,” she said. “So, I would hope (in the future) to have made some more large-scale theatrical works. I mean, not necessarily like a musical, because I don’t like musicals, for the most part, with rare exceptions. But to just keep exploring that intersection of art, theater and visual art.”

St. Vincent’s introduction to the music of such towering composers as Stravinsky, Bartok and Debussy came when she attended Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music 25 years ago, when she was in her late teens.

Before enrolling at Berkley, she spent time as a roadie and tour manager for her virtuoso guitarist uncle’s duo, Tuck & Patti, an experience that proved foundational for her. St. Vincent touched upon that and other topics in our interview, which has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: We last spoke in 2014, when you were on tour with David Byrne, and you told me: “I think the most valuable thing I got out of attending Berklee is simply being exposed to more music that I didn’t know, specifically composers like Stravinsky and Debussy, more modern classical music that I think probably has worked its way into my subconscious pretty deeply. In a lot of ways, I’m a more intuitive musician. I can be as cerebral as the next person, but I don’t analyze chord charts and diagram harmony for fun. It’s either in my ears or not.” So, to start off: Were there any specific pieces by Debussy or Stravinsky, maybe La Mer or Petrushka, that really resonated with you?

A: Oh, yeah. My song “Marrow” is, basically, a love letter to Petrushka. So, it’s funny and humbling to actually be playing these songs with an orchestra that — in so many ways — I originally envisioned (orchestrally) and were inspired by orchestral music. Specifically (with) Petrushka, it’s a real full-circle moment.

Q: It’s one thing to envision doing an orchestral concert, album and tour, and another to make it a reality. What have been the biggest rewards, surprises, and challenges for you with this?

A: The biggest reward is you get to know a city by its orchestra. One of my favorite things is to get the whole orchestra on our side by the end of (each concert). And my hope is that they get to have a lot of fun. I know it’s not Mahler or their typical programming. But it really is rewarding to me when the orchestra ends up having a great time. You said most rewarding. What was the other one?

Q: There were two others: surprises and challenges.

A: Well, I’m not completely surprised, but I love doing these shows so much. I knew that I would enjoy it, but I didn’t know I would enjoy it as much as I am. And I hope that I get to do this (again) going forward. And that, as I make new records, we just add more to the repertoire and then come out and do orchestral shows when there’s more to be said.

(Doing this) is like you’re standing in front of a giant wave of beauty. So for me, the challenge — as a singer and performer and musician — is to be as completely in the moment as possible and be a surfer on that wave. Because just the sound of an orchestra itself is massive. There’s 60 people behind you, playing their hearts out — that’s the beauty, and the challenge, of it.

Q: Is it liberating for you to do these songs with an orchestra?

A: Oh, god, yeah! There are songs from my early records, like “Paris Is Burning,” that I always wanted to have a whole French horn section playing the opening line, which is basically a nod to (Tchaikovsky’s) Peter and the Wolf. And now I can. Now, it’s finally realized. Back in the day making those early records, I was just scrappy. It was a (low) budget affair, so I couldn’t exactly commission a 60-piece orchestra to play.

Q: How foundational was it for you as a teenager to go on the road with Tuck & Patti?

A: Deeply so. I got to travel around and tour with them, starting when I was 18, and got to see what it was really like to be a musician on the road. And I think it very much instilled in me this idea that I should know every aspect of my craft and to be as technically literate as I could, musically. I think that’s served me well. Because it’s offered me a whole lot of autonomy in the process (of making music) because I know how to record myself (and) arrange things myself, from very scrappy DIY to a little bit more professional. I think I’ve been able to (achieve) the sound I hear in my head, especially with my last record, which I produced and spent a while lot of time on.

Q: Hindsight being 20/20, when you look back on your 2012 “Love That Giant” tour with David Byrne, does it seem like it was almost a blueprint for his “American Utopia” tour six years later?

A: I would never suppose that I know what David is up to, or gonna make next. He’s such a genius and so multifaceted and multidisciplinary that I’m always just so pleasantly surprised. I do think that was, you know, that was the beginning. I think of him really liking everybody (in the band) being wireless and ambulatory. So, yeah, I guess— looking back — that was kind of the blueprint. Because everybody, all the horn players on that tour, and me and David were dancing, and making formations, and all very choreographed. Yeah. That’s interesting. I hadn’t kind of put that all together, but I love that show.

Q: Here’s a hypothetical question: You decide to take some time off, and — almost concurrently — you get offers to work with Bjork, Joni Mitchell, Tom Waits and a new edition of King Crimson. What do you do?

A: I’d figure out a way to work with every single one of them! What do I do? I mean, you just named, like, my holy trinity! I was just listening to (Waits’ 1977 album) “Foreign Affairs” this morning. What do I do? I’d sit at the feet of the masters and try to be of service.

Q: Are they all equal to you? If you could only work with one of them, would you gravitate more towards one?

A: Oh man, that’s a tricky question. I could be very practical with it. Like, Joni’s probably the oldest of the people you mentioned, so maybe I ought to slide in there before… I’m sorry, that sounds morbid. I don’t know, maybe I’m overthinking this. There are people, these great artists, who you feel like you could make something great with. And there are some artists that you go: “I wouldn’t touch a hair on your head.”

Q: But in this case, you would touch all their hair?

A: That would be the hope — and just walk away with a handful of pomade!

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