Nubya Garcia announces new album Odyssey and releases lead single ‘The Seer’

Leading UK saxophonist Nubya Garcia is set to return with her first full new studio album since her breakthrough 2020 LP, Source, which saw her nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, grace the cover of Jazzwise and firmly established her as one of the biggest names to emerge from the explosion of new British jazz.

With new album Odyssey released on 20 September on Concord Jazz, the first single, ‘The Seer’, reflects Garcia’s efforts to ‘find clarity’. Speaking about the track, Garcia said it’s like “wishing that you could get a peek at the future, or even just gathering some guidelines in your own future so that you could know that you're on the right path.”

Odyssey, as the title suggests, an ambitious, epic journey of an album. In a largely male-dominated scene, Garcia has carved herself a prominent space and she invites other top black female musicians to join her on the record, namely Esperanza Spalding, Richie Seivwright and Georgia Anne Muldrow. The album is produced by Garcia and returning collaborator Kwes, with the saxophonist backed by her powerful trio of pianist Joe Armon-Jones, bassist Daniel Casimir and drummer Sam Jones.

Describing the overarching theme behind the project, Garcia says: “It represents the notion of truly being on your own path, and trying to discard all the outside noise saying you should go this way or that way.”  It’s also inspired by life’s ever-changing, ever-continuing adventure, the twists and turns of living. Musically, the album finds Garcia orchestrating strings for the first time, having fallen back in love with composition and then painstakingly studied a vast array of orchestral sounds. The bigger, bolder result is a widescreen soundscape that traverses jazz, classical, R&B and dub. 

See the album trailer below and for more info visit www.nubyagarcia.com