When Annie Clark, who performs as St. Vincent, looked back at her Pittsburgh concert history, she recalled her first show being at the Andy Warhol Museum. A show with a really high stage also stuck out in her memories, followed by a stop at Primanti’s.
But a 2014 show stands out to the art rocker, mainly because of the night before a Pittsburgh show — when she performed with the remaining members of Nirvana for the band’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
“I was on tour, it was in the middle of tour, and after we did the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, they threw this crazy fun party at St. Vitus in Brooklyn, and the band kept playing,” Clark said. “Krist (Novoselic) and Dave (Grohl) kept playing, and then (Dinosaur Jr.’s) J. Mascis got up and (Sonic Youth’s) Kim Gordon sang more. Joan Jett sang more. It was a wild night. I got up and sang a couple more songs. It was a wild, one of the most electric, nights of my life.
“I stayed up till like 6 in the morning. The next morning, I had to get on a flight,” she said with a laugh, “and play Stage AE in Pittsburgh. I think I was holding on by a thread. … Yeah, I’m not sure that was my best show.”
There shouldn’t be any insanely late nights before St. Vincent’s next show in Pittsburgh, which comes June 2 when she performs with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra at Heinz Hall. The tour, which kicks off in Pittsburgh, comes after a 2025 symphonic performance that spawned a new album, “Live in London!”
“I did it in London at the Royal Albert (Hall) with the Jules Buckley Orchestra for the BBC, and, honestly, I had such a wonderful time that I just said, I want to do this more. I want to do this again,” said Clark, a six-time Grammy winner. “That’s really all it was. It’s just, this is heaven, standing in front of a 60-piece orchestra. I want to do this.”
In a recent Zoom call from her Los Angeles studio, Clark spoke with TribLive about the symphonic show, collaborations and more. Find a transcript of the conversation, edited for clarity and length, below.
How is this kind of show different from a “normal” concert for you?
Oh, like, night and day. First of all, it’s incredibly civilized. It’s about precision and abandon. It’s about finding abandon through precision. It’s not really like a rock show where I’m spitting and bleeding. It’s really beautiful. I just get to sort of bathe in beauty and mystery, and sing with my full chest. It’s just beautiful.
Is it less physical than what you would normally do?
It’s physical in a very different way. The schedule is that you basically play the show (twice): the rehearsal is the sound check is the entire show. You’re going in and singing two full shows a day, because you need to make sure that everything is copacetic and rehearsed with the orchestra ahead of time. So it’s very physical in the sense of my voice and mentally very stimulating in a different way because you’re just reacting in real time in a different way than in a rock show, in a way that I kind of can’t explain, but it’s more physical to my core. Whereas I think rock shows are kind of more physical to my limbs.
Related
• Ashnikko brings high-energy Smoochies tour to Pittsburgh for sold-out show• Ryan Bingham talks new album, 'Yellowstone' role and more ahead of Pittsburgh concert
• 2026 Pittsburgh area concert calendar
You’re opening your tour here with the Pittsburgh Symphony, so for the first show of the tour, will you have extra rehearsals to sort of nail down what you want to do?
No, so the way we’re doing it is that I’m traveling with Jules Buckley, the conductor. He is conducting. He’s amazing, and he did a lot of the arrangements, so we have the same hand guiding these various orchestras through the music. I’ll have Rachel Eckroth on keys and Robert Ellis on guitar and Allee Futterer on bass and John Hadfield on drums, so it’s like I’m bringing my own five-piece band, so those things are a constant because obviously it’d be pretty hard to find the right drummer or bass player or whatever in each city. So I’m traveling with my people, so we’ll roll in having rehearsed everything we possibly can without the orchestra and getting all the tones and everything dialed in, and then we’ll go in day of show, soundcheck with the orchestra and play the whole show, and then get ready and then play the whole show obviously for an audience.
Yeah, I talked to Trisha Yearwood last year, and she did a similar tour, and she said it was more likely that she was going to be the one to mess up in comparison to the orchestra.
A thousand percent. A thousand percent. (laughs)
Is the setlist going to borrow from the “Live in London!” album? Will there be new songs added to that?
Yeah, I think we’ll eventually add a couple, and what is on the “Live in London!” album, there were some songs that we cut from that, so there are songs we can sub in and out, but it will be largely from that database.
Does this type of performance give you the chance to examine your back catalog with a different set of ears, to listen to it a little differently?
It really does, because in doing this project, it’s almost felt like a retrospective. I’ve gone through my various records and realized, wow, I’ve made a lot of music, released a lot of music in the past 20 years, and it’s been a lot of different kinds of music, I would say. It’s interesting to go back and hear, OK, this is what I was listening to, or this is what I was really influenced by, or this is who I was hanging out with at this period of time, and this is what I was going through and hear them anew. It’s been exciting. I’ve been impressed, I guess, with some of the older work that I never revisited, because I don’t look back, I’m just kind of OK, whatever, I’m on to the next thing, you know? As soon as I release something, it’s not for me anymore, but it’s been nice to rediscover it.
Which of those songs do you think benefits the most from the symphonic treatment?
I love the arrangement for “Los Ageless,” I love that one. I love the arrangement for “Smoking Section.” Obviously, a song like “Marrow,” that was kind of a love letter to Stravinsky anyway, so to hear it almost sound like its inspiration is really interesting and cool. I mean, truly all of them. There’s kind of nothing you could have a 60-piece orchestra play that would bum you out, you know? (laughs)
Do you think it helps to bring the songs to life in a way that can’t be duplicated by you and just a few musicians in the band? Is it closer to what you hear in your head sometimes?
There’s certainly older songs that I go, oh, this is what I was always hearing, this was sort of the full Disney, looking glass version of this song that I just couldn’t afford to record with this many people ever (laughs) but this was the North Star, certainly.
Listening to the London performance of “Violent Times” gave me some James Bond vibes. Do you hear that? Were those themes a part of what you listened to when you were younger?
I guess everybody kind of knows the James Bond theme song, whether you’ve seen it a million times or not. But, yeah, “Violent Times” to me has always sounded like a Bond theme. I think in its most successful form, because I wrote that song a while ago and tried it a few different ways, but in its most successful form, it’s the kind of song that should wear a tuxedo, you know? That’s just what it looks best in.
In the past, you said that “Actor” was influenced by the cinematic scores from films from the ‘30s and ‘40s Disney movies, so does this bring that to life a little bit for you?
A thousand percent. This is my “Fantasia.” (laughs)
Is there going to be a broom flying around or anything like that?
That’ll have to be for the L.A. and Orlando shows.
Were there any songs that you listened to that maybe didn’t lend themselves to this treatment?
There were songs that not so much that it didn’t lend themselves to the treatment, but more so that in the context of the setlist and the story that we’re trying to tell with it, that other songs did that job better. Like, OK, this song checks that box better than this song, and we don’t have time to play everything, so best idea wins.
In the past, you’ve done a collaborative album with David Byrne, you’ve played with Paul McCartney, you’ve performed with Nirvana. How do you come to terms with that? Are you freaking out when you meet these people?
Of course, I’m freaking out, but it’s also, in my experience, and this may be the way in corporate America too — I have no idea — but in my experience, the real ones are the nicest and the friendliest. The greats are confident in their greatness and therefore are very generous. It’s the people in the middle (laughs) who usually have an attitude or whatever. But the greats don’t have anything to prove and are just generous with themselves, generous with the music.
Has that influenced your interactions with people? Because somebody could be looking up to you the way that you look up to some of these other acts.
Yeah, certainly, I mean, at some point in music when you’re coming up, you’re the freshman, right? It’s your first record, and you’re trying to figure out how this whole crazy thing works, and at this point, I get to sort of see the freshman or sophomore class or whatever and not necessarily offer my advice — because I don’t think they don’t need my advice. It’s more like I get to offer my support and go, oh, if you ever need to talk, if you’re going through something, you’re burned out from the road? Yeah, OK, let’s talk about it. Been there, you’re not alone, kind of thing. So that feels like a really nice position to be in in terms of, I wouldn’t call it mentorship, but just like being a bro to the younger ones coming up is important to me, and a position I’ve sort of found myself in more recently, which is very cool. And then in terms of talking to fans, I always have really nice interactions. I’m at a very nice level, where people are just kind and open and we’re just mutually respectful.
Are there any other dream acts that you’d like to work with down the road?
Yeah, of course. I will say, it’s not as if getting to play with the remaining members of Nirvana was ever on my list of dreams, because I just never dreamt. I couldn’t have dreamt. I never could have dreamt that I would ever get to collaborate or play on stage with Paul McCartney. These aren’t even things that I could have even conceived of.
