Nick Drake at the Last Night of the Proms 2025
Poet and librettist Nick Drake was commissioned with the award-winning composer Rachel Portman to create a 'song' for the BBC Proms. The Gathering Tree received its world premiere on Saturday 13 September 2025 at the Last Night of the Proms. The BBC Singers and the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus were conducted by Elim Chan.
Nick Drake will be in conversation with Rachel Portman and artist Julie Brook at Kings Place in London on 23 April 2026 at 7.30pm. They will discuss their collaborations, Earth Song and Tipping Points, that draw inspiration from the environment and elements. More details and booking for Celebrating the Earth with Rachel Portman, Julie Brook and Nick Drake here.
'The Gathering Tree is about who we are at our best, celebrating how we come together. Nick Drake's specially written words speak to what we share, what we hold dear, and how we are the sum of our lives' stories. We came up with the idea of 'gathering' as a foundation of this piece. I imagined a work that begins simply and then lifts and 'gathers up' as it progresses, something that people could sing together in community gatherings and on occasions such as the Last Night of the Proms. Each verse rises up into the repeated chorus of 'We are the source, the stream and the river' where we gather to sing as one. The last verse refers specifically to the Last Night of the Proms and, as it leads into the chorus, the organ joins, the orchestra builds and the trumpets soar above the choir in joyful gathering.' – Rachel Portman, in the BBC Proms programme notes
Nick Drake and Rachel Portman have previously collaborated on Earth Song (2019) and Tipping Points, which had its UK premiere at the Brighton Festival with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in May 2025.
The BBC Proms commission was for Nick Drake to write something about 'who we are now' as a nation. Below is the chorus to The Gathering Tree, the poem which Nick Drake wrote for Rachel Portman to set to music.
We are the source, the stream and the river,
We are the stories we sing to the sea
We are the stories of loss, the stories of love,
Together we sing the gathering tree
The Last Night of the Proms was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 on Saturday 13 September 2025. The live television broadcasts were divided between two channels: BBC Two (first half), then BBC One (The Finale), and both are available on BBC iPlayer for 11 months. The Gathering Tree was performed in the second half of the programme.
'The Gathering Tree by Rachel Portman, lyrics by the contemporary poet NIck Drake, her regular collaborator, transporting us to another place entirely, somewhere really truly beautiful and luscious, and relaxing.' – Katie Derham, BBC One TV
BBC One (Finale). Available on BBC iPlayer for 11 months after broadcast. The Gathering Tree is introduced at 43:50. Nick Drake and Rachel Portman were invited to stand after the performance to receive applause from a very appreciative audience.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002jm3q/bbc-proms-2025-last-night-of-the-proms-finale
'Words by the wonderful poet Nick Drake' – Petroc Trelawney, BBC Radio 3
The Gathering Tree starts 2.43.00 and ends 2.50.46. No longer available on BBC Sounds.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002j624
Nick Drake's first book-length collection, The Man in the White Suit (Bloodaxe Books, 1999), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. It won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 1999, and was selected for the Next Generation Poets promotion in 2004. His second collection, From The Word Go, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2007. In September 2010 he was invited to join Cape Farewell's trip to the Arctic to explore climate change, and from that journey arose a commission from United Visual Artists to create poems and texts for their ground-breaking installation High Arctic at the National Maritime Museum (2011). Those poems, together with others inspired by the Arctic and its voices, are gathered in his book-length sequence of poems The Farewell Glacier (2012), which Nick Drake adapted for performance at COP26 and then for BBC Radio 3. His fourth collection, Out of Range, was published by Bloodaxe in 2018.
Nick Drake is also a screenwriter, and co-wrote the screenplay for the feature film One Life, starring Anthony Hopkins and Helena Bonham Carter, which opened in UK cinemas on 1 January 2024. The trailer can be seen here.
[29 July 2025]
