Nubya Garcia

Nubya Garcia’s music feels like a living, breathing map of modern London. It is jazz that has spent its life in clubs, absorbing the heavy low-end of dub, the syncopation of broken beat, and the communal energy of the UK's vibrant Afro-diasporic scene. Her saxophone tone is commanding and rich, capable of soaring spiritual heights or grounding a track with gritty, blues-inflected weight. It’s music that feels both ancient in its technical mastery and urgent in its contemporary relevance. What truly sets her apart is the way she integrates electronic textures and massive, dub-heavy production without losing the organic interplay of a live ensemble. She doesn't just play jazz; she orchestrates sonic environments where orchestral sweeps can coexist with skeletal, driving percussion. There is a sense of purpose in every note, a feeling of 'source' and identity that radiates through her compositions. Start with the album 'Source' to experience her full breadth. It acts as a definitive statement of her sound, blending reggae, cumbia, and soul into a high-fidelity jazz framework. From there, explore her earlier EPs like 'When We Are' to hear her experimental electronic side, or her 2024 work 'Odyssey' for a more expansive, cinematic take on her signature style.

Nubya Nyasha Garcia (born 1991) is a British jazz musician, saxophonist, composer and bandleader. Garcia was born in 1991 in Camden Town, London to a Guyanese mother, a former civil servant, and a British Trinidadian filmmaker father, the youngest of four siblings. Her uncle is John R. Rickford, who is the J. E. Wallace Sterling Professor of Linguistics and the Humanities at Stanford University. Garcia followed her three older siblings to the local Saturday music center at the age of 5, where she first learned the violin and later played the viola in the London Schools Symphony Orchestra (LSSO). Garcia has said her home life with her stepdad, a brass player with a vast collection of instruments, and her mother a keen collector of all genres of music from reggae and Latin to classical and soul, coupled with the music activities at school, Camden School for Girls, meant she was saturated with music of all genres. Garcia began learning the saxophone at the age of 10, with Vicky Wright. She became a member of the Camden Jazz Band, directed by jazz pianist Nikki Yeoh, before joining the junior jazz program at the Royal Academy of Music. She also attended the workshops of Tomorrow's Warriors under the direction of Gary Crosby. While still in High School, she received a scholarship for a five-week summer program at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. During her Gap Year she studied with former Jazz Messengers member, Jean Toussaint. In 2016 she graduated with Honours from the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, in Jazz Performance. In 2017, Garcia released her debut EP Nubya's 5ive via the label Jazz re:freshed. That year, her band was an opening act at Gilles Peterson's Worldwide Festival in Sète; the following year she played at the NYC Winter Jazz Festival and the Jazzfest Berlin. In her 2018 EP When We Are, Garcia explored how electronics can be used in a live jazz environment; the EP was created as a result of the Steve Reid Innovation Award. She is also a member of the Nérija, a collective, and the band Maisha led by drummer Jake Long. In addition, she is a collaborator on albums by Makaya McCraven, Theon Cross, Moses Boyd, and Sons of Kemet to Shabaka Hutchings; contributions from her can be found on five tracks of Brownswoods We Out Here, a sampler album from the modern London jazz scene. Garcia tours internationally, in Europe, India, Australia, and North America. She regularly performs at festivals in the UK including Love Supreme Jazz Festival. She has headlined sell-out shows at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club London. Garcia also has a burgeoning reputation as a DJ, with a monthly radio residency on NTS Radio since November 2017. Garcia was supposed to perform at the Glastonbury Festival, but the festival had to be cancelled due to the increasing concerns over the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.