Nubya Garcia is letting the music lead her forward

Approaching the release of her second album Odyssey and its unique companion exhibition, the Camden Town-born composer, bandleader and saxophonist shows no sign of being bothered by the weight of expectation, her relaxed tone defying her often animated syntax. It's hardly surprising, though, given that the central theme of the record is connecting to one’s inner voice, following a personal path, being present, and resisting the pull of external noise. Odyssey, it seems, is an ongoing process.

“In whatever I do, I let the music lead me,” says Garcia, reflecting on how the concepts in her work begin to emerge. “I’ve got a particular notebook that has staves in it and a blank page where I can be like, ‘What happened today? What story am I writing about? What colours are coming to mind?’ Then, when I come back later, I’ve got a really strong foundation to pull from, rather than trying to remember how I was feeling a year ago.”

Garcia may be a lifelong student of music, but the jazz-trained sax virtuoso storytelling draws from any and all sources, including film and visual art. “I think [influence] probably happens in quite a subconscious way,” she explains. “It might be me taking a photo of a piece at an exhibition that really moves me and years later going, ‘What was that painting I want to draw for today? That feels like my energy, let’s see what comes out if I write to that...’” She pauses. “I’m quite a sponge, and I think most creatives are super spongey beings. It’s what makes you able to construct a place for people to realise their emotions and feel held in that space.”

Garcia is one of the most recognisable sponges of the now-gimmicked “London jazz explosion,” catapulting into the public consciousness four years ago with her Mercury Prize-nominated debut Source. Any follow-up to such a phenomenal album would be high stakes, one might think: Source is regarded as a masterstroke, Garcia’s exhilarating band marrying serious jazz to dub, bebop, hip-hop and fusion stylings. There’s even a Source mural in Haggerston, owing to the record’s cultural eminence

Happily, Odyssey more than delivers, doubling down on Garcia’s talent for musical alchemy and broadening her palette to incorporate strings arrangements on three-quarters of the record. There’s a cinematic, expansive feel to the record, mirrored in its eye-catching array of collaborators that includes jazz vocal heavyweight Esperanza Spalding and the Chineke! Orchestra, Europe’s first professional orchestra to be comprised of majority Black and ethnically diverse musicians.

“The first tune that I wrote strings on was ‘Odyssey’,” explains Garcia. “I didn’t intend to put strings on over half the album – that was not the plan – and it’s a testament to how things can build slowly as you get more comfortable in that sound. I grew up playing in orchestras, so I felt at home, but constructing it, creating it, arranging it, orchestrating it is a very different thing to being at the back of the viola section.”

She continues. “It was a really organic process for me, the string section. I’d think, ‘Why don’t I see if this idea fits here, I’ve got this line in my head,’ and then I harmonised it, reharmonised it, pulled some things out, and then things grew, and that is what you call a flow state! I was deeply in my flow state for pretty much all of writing this record. Don’t get me wrong, the string arrangements were hard and arduous at times, but that’s the arrangement of it. The composition of it really flowed, and the arranging of it was a new area for me.”

The strings on Odyssey do a lot to promote Garcia as a bandleader-stroke-composer first and a saxophonist second. Her arrangements are vast, cascading widescreens: “Clarity” is introduced by evocative, neo-noir violins that meld with rich piano chords, opening out into an Ethio-flavoured sax head. Garcia’s sax is entirely absent on “Water’s Path”, a tune of pizzicato splashes and sweeping cellos that resembles Tchaikovsky’s “Variations on a Rococo Theme” as much as it does anything on Source.

“Everybody has a right way of doing things,” she says. “Every single seminal composer has a different voicing that they go to. That’s why it’s their sound. That’s how you know it’s Debussy, how you know it’s Tchaikovsky. I wasn’t trying to emulate all of these incredible human beings that I’ve listened to a million times. I want to be me. I want to be an amalgamation of everything that’s passed through my ears from day dot.”

Included within this amalgamation are Garcia’s core band – a line-up that’s remained constant since they started rehearsing together a decade ago. On keys, Ezra Collective’s Joe Armon-Jones; on bass, Daniel Casimir, whose recent album Balance was recorded with the London Contemporary Orchestra; and on drums, Sam Jones, whose also played with Obongjayar, Charlotte Dos Santos and Oscar Jerome. Garcia’s band scores highly both for its density of talent and for its ability to reflect a vast cross-section of a flourishing nationwide jazz culture, resulting in a kinetic hybrid of group cohesion and idiosyncratic musicianship.

“I think the nature of the way we were brought up in the jazz idiom makes us know that whatever you’re doing, bring yourself on it, within the context of the composer’s wishes and wants,” says Garcia. “I write for the players that are going to be on the record. I know their playing deeply. I’ve been playing with them for 10 years, and I’ve known them for longer, so there’s a deep telepathy, musicality, [everyone playing with] open ears, connecting.”

The collaborative, self-expressive ethos of the band’s performance may seem at odds with the individual clarity of Garcia’s composition – the flow state that defined the writing process for Odyssey – but they’re two sides of the same coin. Epic closing stepper “Triumphance” was actually the first take from the session, and it’s a beautiful fusion of each player’s journey across the album. Everyone locks into the vision.

“I’ve written collectively in bands and duos before but it’s actually just really time-consuming,” Garcia says, laughing. “For me, with this project, I had a clear vision: I’ve got the chords, I’ve got the sheets, I’ve got the melodies, I’ve got the ideas down, but I’m super open to learning more, understanding more, asking ‘does this feel comfortable within your instrument?’ – and then there’s something beautiful that you find from writing something for another instrument on another instrument. I wouldn’t say I could put [my vision] into words, but I’ve achieved that vision and this is how it sounds.”

Garcia’s philosophy loosens a little when working with guest vocalists. KOKOROKO’s Richie provides a soulful turn on intimate third single “Set it Free”, while Georgia Anne Muldrow cuts a powerful presence on “We Walk in Gold”. “Each vocalist is different, right, and you converse and you learn each other’s way of working,” says Garcia. “I don’t have ten years with them, and they know more about their voice than I do. They know more about lyric writing than I do. I’m just an admirer of their music and their musicality.”

Meanwhile, you’d be forgiven for thinking that inviting Esperanza Spalding onto the record might have ruffled Garcia’s calm. The five-time Grammy winner sings the head to “Dawn” before Garcia even picks up her sax, the implication being either of making way or of patient confidence. “With Esperanza, I wrote everything, and she was the last bit to be put on the track,” explains Garcia. “When I wrote it, I wanted it to be this vocal and sax duet, but always in unison — I just wanted it to feel like one voice, where the sax timbre and vocal timbre enmesh. She laid it down as I played it, and in post-production I realised that I really wanted it to start slower, softer, easier... so I pulled myself out.”

The choice pays off: Spalding soars through the opening bars of “Dawn”, and there’s a sweet, longing, “‘Round Midnight” quality when the two link up. Later, on “We Walk in Gold”, it’s Garcia opening and Georgia Anne Muldrow responding, lead musical voices weaving in and out till the close. It provides one of many moments of circularity across the record, bringing Garcia’s determinism into close view.

She hits upon a core dualism: the massive diversity in sounds and yet the intangible ‘London-ness’ of it all. “You can hear a certain magic and a certain I-don’t-know-what in the music, and I think that is what people are drawn to. For me, bringing classical and string textures in didn’t feel far-reaching, because on any night of the week I can go and hear an orchestra or an avant-garde sextet. The underground far and wide is leading the charge of the city.”

Perhaps for balance, blossoming festivals such as Dorset’s We Out Here stress the role of heritage, staging the current generation on the same bill as bona fide legends like Dee Dee Bridgewater and Pharaoh Sanders. Garcia’s appearance there last year was visceral and urgent, evidencing the cross-cultural, cross-contextual truth that live performance is at the heart of all jazz music.

Her own playing has been shaped by encounters with the greats. “The one that is absolutely undeniable is Charles Lloyd, who I saw at the Barbican Jazz Festival,” she says. “The first half was Randy Brecker and Joe Lovano – phenomenal gig – and I bumped into Moses [Boyd], who told me there’s a whole other set, Charles Lloyd. That was life-changing. I’d never come across his music before, I did a deep dive after that gig, and I met him a few years ago at Pittsburgh Jazz Festival and I lost my mind.”

Who else? “I was at the actual taping of Chicago Waves by Miguel Atwood-Ferguson and Carlos Niño. It was a live improvised set and it just felt like time stood still. Everyone on the same ship, same journey. And at Field Day, years ago, the one where Erykah Badu headlined, I was right at the front. She got on stage wearing these huge white, leather, thigh-high boots, massive coat, then she absolutely shelled it down and they cut her off. I was furious!”

Individual artistry aside, it’s hard to culturally separate Garcia from the scene in which she came to prominence – the “so-called London Jazz Situation”, as she tellingly describes it. At times, it’s felt like there isn’t a venue toilet cubicle, gentrified high street billboard or indie magazine front cover in London without exuberant plastering hailing the explosion of young jazz players and their myriad links to everything cool. Marketing has focused on the sound’s links to club culture and hip-hop – How Could Jazz Possibly Attract a Young Audience?! – and although the number and range of people listening to jazz has indisputably grown, the tag has risked falsely homogenising the diverse output of many of the scene’s musical contributors.

“I think one of the most beautiful things about [the London Jazz Scene] is that it is so unique person-to-person,” Garcia contends. “I don’t think Theon Cross sounds like Ezra Collective, who don’t sound like me, who doesn’t sound like Seed. If we really get down to the nitty and gritty of the soul of everyone’s music, I think the nature of the wider cultural spaces that we have in London makes the music that we have. And that is really specific, and wide-reaching.”

It’s a compelling frame. Look at Field Day’s lineup that year (2018) and you can bet that almost everyone under Erykah Badu is, in some way, influenced by her music. “It’s just amazing to witness the trajectory of possibility in this world of music where you’re like, ‘Can I do this when I’m 50, 60, 70 years old?’ I look to Erykah, to Jill Scott, The Roots, Charles Lloyd… so many musicians around the world who are continuing to push themselves forward and continue delivering their honest authentic selves.”

London jazz seems so well-integrated now that it’s easy to forget where it started. “People think that what it is now is what it was ten years ago,” says Garcia. “People were so diminishing of jazz. We were at uni finding pubs to play in... people weren’t on our side in the beginning. Ten years is a long fucking time, and it's a testament to the nature of community, radio, media, venues, tastemakers, agents, promoters… like, it’s all one thing under this umbrella of art.”

Natural and organic the music may be, but reaching this point was anything but pre-determined. “It’s not without a hell of a lot of hard work from a lot of different people, and a lot of support from people who can make a difference,” Garcia concludes “I’m really grateful that people are into it and paying attention and want to support it.”

Odyssey – the process – continues.