Odyssey is a landmark offering from Nubya Garcia

Gliding effortlessly and with faultless logic and unifying inspiration across genre barriers, moods and styles, Odyssey takes the listener on a genuinely epic and exciting journey of musical discovery, firmly rooted in jazz but blissfully unbound by genre conventions.

The follow-up to Garcia’s 2020 debut Source is propelled by a particularly potent key ingredient in the form of Garcia’s string orchestrations. Performed by the Chineke! Orchestra (the first professional orchestra in Europe comprised of predominantly black and ethnically diverse musicians), the subtle yet suitably soaring strings that infuse tracks like the weightlessly floating, beautifully swelling opener “Dawn” (featuring the vocals of esperanza spalding) with a majestic widescreen grandeur that hints at the string-infused swirls of Alice Coltrane’s World Galaxy, even if Odyssey is generally a considerably more controlled and composed undertaking than that free jazz-leaning 1972 album.

There are moments on Odyssey that are refreshingly distant from jazz conventions. The musically minimalist “Set It Free” (featuring the vocals of KOKOROKO’s Richie) marries a seriously vibrant funky drummer groove to jazz-derived angular keyboard voicings to create an unusually compelling R&B/jazz fusion. Similarly, “We Walk In Gold” (featuring singer Georgia Anne Muldrow) blends a slow-burning, sparse pulse with a soaring soul ballad, with saxophone motifs that might just nod towards the languid tones of Ethiopian jazz. “Water’s Path” is an evocative showcase for the strings, whilst album closer “Triumphance” bridges the theoretically glaring gap between bass-heavy dub reggae and jazz with effortless, even anthemic ease.

Crucially, these diversions from the expected script slot in seamlessly with tracks that celebrate the near-telepathic interplay between Garcia and her core band. Drummer Sam Jones’s relentless drive to escalate the music towards an unstoppable, constantly evolving momentum proves particularly impressive on the tracks built more overtly around the pulsating musical communication between Garcia and the band, such as the fierce rhythmic drive of “The Seer” and the extensive, sprawling title track, perhaps the album’s clearest nod towards the virtuoso dexterity of Garcia’s key vintage inspirations ala John Coltrane and Miles Davis. Away from the more muscularly assertive moments, Garcia’s saxophone playing is at its lyrical, expressive best on the contemplative, Blues-y highlight “Clarity”.

An uncommonly diverse yet still seamlessly unified album that is audibly conscious of traditions without ever becoming beholden to them, Odyssey seems destined to be counted amongst the landmarks of the ongoing creatively fertile Brit-Jazz resurgence.