Nubya Garcia Thinks Big!

Interview, From the Magazine, Nubya Garcia

By Ammar Kalia I Oct. 29, 2024

“I really want to provide a positive example for other women coming up in music,” says saxophonist Nubya Garcia.
(Photo: Robert Sutherland-Cohen)

Nubya Garcia is feeling more free than ever before. Spending much of 2023 and 2024 taking a break from her previous schedule of playing up to 100 shows per year, the 32-year-old London-based saxophonist has instead been travelling the world, moving from France to Brazil, taking time to explore, experience and hone her craft. “I’m striving for more balance in the way that I live, since touring constantly is so unsustainable,” she says.

It’s beautiful to disconnect from London and to experience different ways of living. It made me think about the ways that I spend my energy and in the end, it reaffirmed my commitment to music.”

The last time we spoke, at the end of 2021, she was closing out a 30-date European run before heading on a 17-date U.S. tour supporting instrumental trio Khruangbin. Making up for lost time following the COVID-19 lockdowns, Garcia was in the midst of a career high, having released her acclaimed debut LP, The Source, in 2020, as well as making her Proms debut and being nominated for the prestigious Mercury Music Prize the following year.

“That was a crazy time and I learned a lot from it,” Garcia reflects now over a call from her London home. “I was living a dream and it was also so exhausting. One year I did something like 150 shows, which definitely burnt me out. I knew going into the next record I wanted to be more intentional.”

When it came to approaching her sophomore album, Garcia had one specific goal: to push forward every element of her artistry. “From instrumental practice to writing, arranging and even conducting, I wanted to elevate it all,” she says. “I also wanted this album to feel bigger and more expansive. I wanted to create a body of work that feels like you’re watching a film. It’s cinematic music that brings you unexpected emotions.”

That sense of expansiveness came partly from her trips abroad, spending regular nights in Sao Paulo, Marseille and Rio de Janeiro in the audience at concerts, rather than playing onstage, for the first time in years. “I was enveloped by other people’s artistry all the time and I really enjoyed being around people who were living out loud,” she says. “It moved me to see kids at street parties being out at 11 p.m. or falling asleep on Grandma’s lap at a gig. It gave me the confidence to create work that might inspire the same feeling of togetherness in others.”

The resulting 12 tracks that make up The Odyssey are a leap into an orchestrally intricate and collaboratively joyous side of Garcia’s music. Where The Source and Garcia’s previous EPs, from 2017’s debut Nubya’s 5ive to 2018’s When We Are, harnessed her mixed Guyanese and Trinidian heritage to fuse Latin cumbia grooves and afrobeat rhythms with the declarative, Dexter Gordon-referencing tones of her saxophone lines, The Odyssey showcases Garcia’s skill not just as a soloist but as an arranger and composer for large ensembles, touching on everything from contemporary classical to reggae and mid-century swing. This new phase is also marked aesthetically through the album’s cover, which features a photograph of Garcia’s own face staring defiantly out at the viewer — the first time she hasn’t used illustrative art — marking a new chapter of confident creation.

Tracks like the album opener “Dawn” pair sweeping strings with the clarion-call melodies of featured vocalist esperanza spalding, which are duetted in unison by Garcia’s tenor, while the title track explores a languorous, loping swing that showcases Garcia’s longtime band firing on all cylinders, and “Clarity” features luscious string arrangements sitting beneath a softer lyricism from Garcia’s saxophone. Closing track “Triumphance,” meanwhile, fuses a moody dub-inspired bass line with a fierce melody and choral harmonies expressing lyrics on the need for collective inspiration, rather than individual competition.

“I had a goal to write something every day for a very long time, and some of those ideas I recorded while others were just an offering of what came up on that day and were never heard again,” Garcia explains of her composing process. “I was learning to be consistent and to get into a flow state constantly, rather than waiting for inspiration to spring down from the sky. It meant that when I got to the stage of refining the compositions for the album, it was a testament to the courage and consistency I had practiced before.”

The Odyssey sees Garcia break new ground not only compositionally but also in the skills that she learned during the recording process itself. For the first time, the album sees her arranging for strings and conducting the Chineke Orchestra. “The process flowed organically, since as I began to hear strings for certain songs in my mind, I knew I needed to write and arrange those parts. Although the reality was much harder than I anticipated,” she laughs. “When it came to conducting the orchestra, I knew the arrangements best myself, and so I didn’t want to have to explain it to another conductor. I just decided to do it. I have extremely high standards because I played in orchestras throughout my childhood, and so I had to work really hard at learning this new language. Thankfully, it was a beautiful process, and I am so proud of the results and to have tried something new at the grand old age of 32.”

The Odyssey marks Garcia’s second release on Concord Jazz and also her second time co-producing with British musician Kwes, who has previously worked with artists ranging from Blur frontman Damon Albarn to rapper Loyle Carner. “I definitely wanted to work with Kwes again since he’s such a phenomenal thinker and calm soul that knows so much,” she says. “This time I knew what I wanted way more. I felt more confident as a producer with a strong vision and sound.”

As a female bandleader and producer, Garcia is an outlier in the British music industry, since according to research from Women In Jazz, only 5% of U.K. jazz instrumentalists are women, while the Music Producers Guild only has a 13% membership rate from women as of 2021. Garcia serves as a torchbearer and is increasingly aware of the responsibilities that role carries.

“I really want to provide a positive example for other women coming up in music [and show] that it can be done,” she says. “For myself, I know that I need to stick to my own path and not be pulled in different directions or succumb to pressure. Comparison is the thief of joy, and if you can’t appreciate what you’re doing and what you’ve already done, you’ll always be chasing a phantom.”

Another female bandleader, composer and producer that Garcia has looked up to from the beginning of her career is esperanza spalding. To have her featured now on the opening track of the record comes as a milestone, Garcia explains. “Esperanza is absolutely phenomenal. I’ve followed her journey for such a long time and been so enthralled by the ease with which you can arrive at her musical world,” she says. “I was really inspired by her livestream project [77 Hours Of Exposure] and seeing her create on the fly with such dedication. When I wrote ‘Dawn,’ I was in Brazil, staying on the coast where I would wake up before sunrise and look at the ocean and this melody just came to me. When I finished writing it, I knew I had to have a unison duet on it, to feature two people’s melodies as one, and I didn’t hear anyone else other than esperanza. She was the pipe dream.”

Garcia reached out to spalding’s team and, to her surprise, she immediately agreed to sing on the tune. “I was absolutely blown away, and I didn’t want to get in the way by stifling her unbridled creativity, so all I told her is that the tune is called ‘Dawn,’” she says. “She came back with these amazing lyrics, and it really sets the scene for the album with the harmony meeting the lyrics and our melody line to make something magical.”

Aside from her orchestral and featured collaborators, the core band on the album are musicians with whom Garcia has spent more than a decade honing her skills: keyboardist Joe Armon-Jones, drummer Sam Jones and bassist Daniel Casimir. Several were also members of the grassroots London musical workshop Tomorrow’s Warriors, a jazz training ground that Garcia attended in her teens and that has since gone on to develop the careers of peers like Armon-Jones, drummer Moses Boyd, tuba player Theon Cross and saxophonist Binker Golding.

When she first launched onto the live circuit in the mid-2010s, Garcia became known as a key proponent of this new group of London jazz players, who were each incorporating the musical influences of their diaspora heritages as much as the improvisatory traditions of jazz into their music. Now with two albums under her belt, as well as several award nominations and wins to boot, does Garcia now see herself as an elder of the scene?

“I just wrote a tune this week and I titled it ‘Elders In The Making,’” she laughs. “I don’t really think of myself as an elder of the London jazz scene yet because I still feel 21, but I do have wisdom to share and as the years are passing I’m really excited to see that there are numerous young artists and bands coming up who are continuing to push forward what we have done and continuing to make music that speaks to the city that we’ve grown up in.”

One aspect that Garcia is especially keen to address for these younger players coming up is the current financial state of touring. “If you’re in a band that’s just starting out, I can’t even imagine how challenging it must be to get gigs going and not lose money,” she says. “In the cost-of-living crisis we’re experiencing post-pandemic, I can’t imagine how you make it work sustainably.”

Equally, the pipeline for musicians looking to train and develop their craft is increasingly underfunded and subject to widespread cuts from the British government. Free-to-attend programs like Tomorrow’s Warriors are now becoming outliers in a struggling arts landscape. “I’d love to set up a foundation or charity to support young people, especially women, coming up because that’s what I had and it was so beneficial to me,” Garcia says. “I don’t see funding coming back for the arts, so that needs to be shouldered by the industry to some degree instead. We need to create more space to give opportunities to the people who need them.”

While Garcia sees this foundation as a long-term goal, one she can develop when she has financial backing and the time away from her own music to create a lasting initiative, for the time being it is in playing her music to new, diverse audiences that she feels she is having the greatest impact.

“We’re getting ready to play All Points East festival on the main stage to 50,000 people on a lineup with Nas, which is insane, but it’s also been a long time coming,” she says. “When we first started out, we were pushing to play gigs outside of jazz venues and slowly scaling up, and now it feels like we’re finally here. We’re not just a token act, either, as there are several instrumental artists on the bill, so we’re at home. I hope it’s inspiring for people who are starting out to see.”

Ultimately, it’s not just about jazz anymore. From her early stints playing venues like London’s Ronnie Scott’s to now playing East London’s Victoria Park for a festival crowd, and touring U.S. arenas with Khruangbin in between, Garcia is finding freedom in exploring her newly expansive sound on stage.

“All we need are audiences that are receptive to feeling something, then we can reach them and resonate with whatever we’re playing,” she says. “It’s all about opening the doors to create a multi-genre, energetic space. Somewhere people feel free to express themselves, however they want to.” DB