Around the time she graduated with honours from the renowned Trinity Laban Conservatoire, in 2016, the English saxophonist, composer and bandleader Nubya Garcia played a gig in a pub not far from the college in south London.
One-third of a highly original, groove-heavy trio led by the tuba player Theon Cross that also featured the drummer Moses Boyd, Garcia was thrilled to be playing with such gifted and forward-thinking peers, within a vibrant and revitalised UK jazz scene that was increasingly attracting a young and culturally diverse audience. She was less than delighted, however, with the fee.
“That band was one of the first that really shaped me, and Theon and many other groups at that time had a lot of energy and were creating a lot of new opportunities,” Garcia says. “But British jazz back then wasn’t what it is now, and you’d leave the gig with £20 – for the three of us – and still have to pay the rent the week after.”
While meagre pay is common to most struggling musicians, especially those trying to eke out a living playing jazz, it’s fair to say that things have changed somewhat for Garcia in the intervening years.
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Through music that skilfully synthesises the free spirit of jazz with catchy, rhythmically rich melodies and many of her myriad influences, including dub, reggae, cumbia, broken beat, neosoul and classical, Garcia has become both a figurehead and one of the breakthrough international stars of the recent UK jazz boom.
Other forces that have significantly boosted her profile and popularity include signing to the famed American record label Concord Jazz; a Mercury Prize nomination for her 2020 debut album, Source; acclaimed tours of Europe, Asia, Australia, Latin America and the United States; guest appearances on key albums by some of her contemporaries, including Ezra Collective, Sons of Kemet and Nala Sinephro; and high-profile performances at leading jazz festivals such as Montreux and Newport, as well as at Glastonbury and the BBC Proms.
She has played in Dublin as a member of groups such as the women-led collective Nérija, and was one of the lead acts featured in the most recent series of RTÉ’s Other Voices, recorded in Dingle last December. Next month, audiences will have the opportunity to see the Londoner make her first Irish public performance as leader when she headlines Bray International Jazz Festival.
“I don’t know why I haven’t been to Ireland more, because I really appreciate the culture and the importance that’s placed on music and tradition and pushing things forward. But, yes, Bray marks my first own gig in the country – and it feels crazy: I’m far too old for a debut,” says Garcia, who is 33.
She is talking from Harlem, in New York, where she is staying with a cousin before embarking on her first headline tour of the United States and Canada; previously she played large North American venues supporting the psychedelic postgenre Texas trio Khruangbin.
Garcia says the transformation in her fortunes is down to a familiar mix of hard work, determination and self-belief but also, crucially, to communal effort and action. “I’ve had a lot of people say things to me like, ‘Oh, you’re not going to make any money from this,’ or ‘Who are you, and where’s your place in all this, and why the f**k do you think jazz belongs on a Glastonbury or awards stage?‘” she says.
“But you have to be delusional to be successful in anything. We had a strong community, and we all played in each other’s projects, and we rose together. It happened slowly and collectively. We’ve been pushing at this since we were 20 and at university, proving that we could fill venues and provide the energy that people didn’t attribute to jazz, changing perceptions and making a difference, a cultural movement. So it’s great the world decided to catch up and take notice and support us. We were very, very strong in knowing that other people’s ceilings are not our own.”
Garcia (her first name is pronounced Nuh-BYE-ah) grew up in Camden Town, in north London; her mother was born in Guyana and her father’s roots are in Trinidad. Music was ever present in the home: her mother loved all kinds, from Caribbean to classical, and her late stepfather, whose family was from Barbados, was a brass player with a passion for reggae, dub and sound systems. From an early age she was taken to listen to music, in venues that ranged from the Notting Hill Carnival to concert halls.
Garcia and her three elder siblings were also encouraged to participate. One of her sisters studied clarinet and cello, her brother played trumpet and French horn, and her eldest sister has gone on to be a classical singer. Following their lead, at the age of three Nubya was enrolled at the Saturday Music Centre at Camden School for Girls, where she started on violin and later played piano and recorder.
At the age of eight Garcia found an old silver clarinet that belonged to her stepfather’s family in the house, and she taught herself to play it. When Garcia was 10 her mother bought her an alto saxophone, and her world changed. “That’s when I really found my stride and my place, where I found an instrument that really spoke to me,” she says. “From then on music became my purpose and safe place.”
Soon after, through the publicly funded Camden Music service, Garcia was taking classical saxophone lessons with Vicky Wright and jazz-ensemble classes with the pianist Nikki Yeoh. “Jazz became my thing, which was quite rare, I guess, for an 11-year-old,” she says. “There were a bunch of jazz CDs in the house – by people like Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock – that made their way from the livingroom up to my room, never to be returned.”
She progressed quickly and, as a teen, joined the junior jazz programme at the Royal Academy of Music (“me and the trombone player Rosie Turton were the only two women instrumentalists out of 30 or more in our year”) and won a scholarship for a five-week summer programme at the renowned Berklee College of Music, in Boston. She also played viola in the London Schools Symphony Orchestra, which instilled in her, she has said, “extremely high standards”.
At 16 she also found her way to the free workshops organised by Tomorrow’s Warriors, the inspirational and groundbreaking “youth club for jazz”. “I was wavering about a career in music around that time, but I walked into the room and there were loads of women and black people, and it was the first time I really felt I’d found my tribe and sense of belonging,” Garcia says.
At 18 she applied for a four-year jazz course at Trinity Laban, but she was rejected; the same thing happened the year after and the year after that. Undeterred, Garcia spent the time before being accepted, in 2012, tirelessly practising, and taking saxophone lessons with the former Jazz Messenger Jean Toussaint.
Eventually, at 20, having increasingly fallen under the spell of such tenor masters as Dexter Gordon, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins and Joe Henderson, she switched to the lower-pitched horn. “I was going for that darker, warmer vibe and the tenor just fell into place,” she says.
On graduating, she was hungry and ambitious and wasted little time, soon becoming one of the key players at such lively and newly formed grassroots London venues as Steez, Jazz Re:freshed and the Total Refreshment Centre. Her poise, self-assurance and status as a positive role model for other young women jazz musicians earned her the nicknames Empress and Queen.
Talking to her, you sense a certain steely spirit and admirable resolve, that she is an artist very much in control (she owns her full catalogue of music, for example). At one point I ask how things have changed in the US since she was last there, but she is way ahead of me. “We’re not going to do any politics today. I’ll stop you right there,” she says with a smile.
That spark of authority and confidence can be heard on her second full-length album, the expansive and multilayered Odyssey, released at the end of last year, a record she has said “represents the notion of truly being on your own path”.
In concert too she is a very cool and charismatic presence, a performer who, unlike some jazz acts, likes to fully engage with an audience – none more so than on Odyssey’s standout track, the dub-choral-jazz earworm Triumphance, in which she intones, “Raise up your hands, uplift your soul / And in triumphance together / All as one.”
[ Nubya Garcia: Odyssey – An exhilarating mix of jazz, reggae, dub, neosoul and R&BOpens in new window ]
Garcia has said that the song “encapsulates everything”, that it is a mission statement of sorts. What is that statement, I ask. What is her ultimate goal?
“To express,” she replies, quick as a flash. “I want the music and the shows to feel good, and be great, and have lots of different types of energy and emotion. But I think we can get a bit ahead of ourselves in our heads. At the end of the day I’m a creative vessel: I have my own creative voice, and I want that to shine through. I take that responsibility very deeply.”
Nubya Garcia plays Bray International Jazz Festival on Friday, May 2nd; Odyssey is on the Concord Jazz label
Bray International Jazz Festival: More acts to catch
The annual jazz jamboree by the sea in Bray, Co Wicklow, has officially become an international festival this year, and its enterprising programme more than justifies the expanded title. Leading the way is a solo concert by the prolific and protean American pianist, composer and academic Vijay Iyer, who appears on a double bill with Ronan Guilfoyle – the Irish bassist, composer and educator’s latest group, the experimental-traditional quartet Bemusement Arcade, launches its new album on Dublin’s Livia label, At Swing, Two Birds, at the festival.
Also on the Saturday evening (fine festivals inevitably spark schedule clashes) is a trio led by the hypnotic and transcendent South African pianist, composer, healer and scholar Nduduzo Makhathini, while Sunday is headlined by the commanding and crystalline-toned Finnish trumpeter Verneri Pohjola and his quartet, supported by a trio fronted by the Sicilian (though longtime Ireland-residing) pianist, multi-instrumentalist, “musical polyglot” and Rhiannon Giddens collaborator Francesco Turrisi.
Elsewhere, intrepid music lovers would do well to catch Xhosa Cole, the exhilarating rising-star tenor saxophonist from Birmingham; the agile and inventive Galway guitarist Aengus Hackett; the Scottish experimental folk-jazz sax-drums duo Norman & Corrie; and a Belgian jazz, electronics and ambient pairing of the trombonist Nabou Claerhout and the singer and soundscaper Lynn Cassiers.
