This month: Nubya Garcia
Award-winning saxophonist and composer Nubya Garcia regards her upcoming BBC Proms performance (18 Aug) with infectious enthusiasm and anticipation. ‘I know the Royal Albert Hall so well – I’ve been going there for longer than I haven’t, basically!’ The exact programme and personnel aren’t listed when we speak, but she reveals her plan is to present a live performance of material from her acclaimed 2020 Concord album Source, her first albumlength studio release as a leader. ‘I’m really excited to be bringing the energy of that album into that space, maybe invite some guests and to experience all of that with a Proms audience.’
A 30-and-a-bit Londoner, Garcia has benefited from a musically nurturing family and a wide-ranging musical education that saw her progress from her local music centre and a stint on viola with the London Schools Symphony Orchestra to graduating from
Trinity Laban, also taking in the Royal Academy of Music’s junior jazz programme, the Jazz Warriors, a scholarship for the Berklee summer programme and private study on the saxophone (she took the instrument up aged ten) with Jean Toussaint. With a resolute yet rich and persuasive tenor sax tone and a lucid and emotionally expressive compositional style, her approach embraces both traditional performance and the possibilities given by technology, whether live or in the studio. Her discography includes positions as leader, collaborator and guest, working with Makaya Mccraven, Moses Boyd and Shabaka Hutchings among many others. Her own compositions and their remixes draw happily on everything from mellow soul to skittery drum’n’bass.
The pandemic brought constraints but has allowed her to devote more time to writing. Her commitment to both live work and recording remains undiminished and she’s very much at ease in both environments: ‘I find the studio to be a really special place that lets you construct a whole different universe to that in which you’ve been playing and doing things previously. But of course it’s not really finished until we’re all in the studio, because a huge part of what I write involves improvisation.’ Roger Thomas
‘I know the Albert Hall so well – I’ve been going there for longer than I haven’t’