Nubya Garcia: ‘Music has been with us from the beginning of time – we need to be within it’
The musician and composer talks to Tara Joshi about music, Meltdown, and a lifetime’s dedication coming full circle
As she prepared to appear at the Southbank Centre as part of Little Simz’ Meltdown in June 2025, Nubya Garcia discussed perseverance, performing live and freeing herself from the glass ceilings of others, with Tara Joshi.
In his 2008 book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell posited that the key to achieving next-level expertise in any skill lies in practicing in the correct way for a total of around 10,000 hours. While there are some questions to be asked of this theory, jazz musician, bandleader and composer Nubya Garcia has more than put in the time – and, in doing so, has very much yielded the results.
At 33 years old, Garcia has been playing instruments for almost three decades – aged four, she was learning piano and violin (along with the more standard childhood fare of recorder). By the time she was ten, she had found the saxophone, and thus began a relationship with jazz and improvisation that has culminated (so far) in multiple outings as a bandleader; a sax player on a whole host of projects (she’s performed with Moses Boyd, Joe Armon-Jones and Theon Cross, as well as part of the group Nérija, to name a few); and composer and lead saxophonist on two hugely acclaimed albums of her own: 2020’s Source, and last year’s Odyssey, a sumptuous record of cinematic scope and scale.
‘It’s quite a hard choice to make when you don’t know where the path is going to lead you,’ says the Camden-born artist over video call, reflecting on her dedication to music that began in childhood. ‘It’s an unseen commitment to your practice while your mates are doing whatever else, having fun.’
Of course, even with those 10,000 hours of dedicated practice well under her belt, life as a musician in 2025 is far from a relaxing occupation. In the precarious streaming economy, artists have to sell merch and go on lengthy tours to make ends meet – when we speak, Garcia is just back from touring Europe, the UK and North America, decompressing a little before she heads back on the road. Still, she seems pretty lively when we chat, eyes bright beneath her chunky amber glasses.
‘There are so many aspects of music that I think should be uplifted and upheld and encouraged, because the world needs it,’ she says, ‘especially now. We need spaces of gathering – that’s what I’ve learned from touring for 13 years, the spaces that we inhabit when we are in those rooms together? You’re there, you’re present. You are there for a reason. You want to feel something, or you want the person you brought to be with you whilst you’re engaging in this very sacred practice. Music has been with us from the beginning of time in various ways. And I think on every scale, from the smallest stage to the highest stadium shows, we need this, you know? We need to be within it.’
Garcia has felt even more connected to this sacred sensation following the Covid-19 pandemic, not least due to her first album coming out during lockdown. ‘I won’t lie, it was fucking hard,’ she recalls. The world coming to a halt meant Garcia couldn’t tour the record immediately – but when she was finally able to play shows again, around a year and half after the album’s release, she did so with a newfound appreciation for the music and performance. ‘I hadn’t really listened to it since it was made,’ she explains, ‘then [eventually] we toured it, and I saw it kind of grow and evolve and change. And that was a really beautiful process as a composer.’
‘The world needs music, especially now. We need spaces of gathering – that’s what I’ve learned from touring for 13 years’
Often framed solely as a saxophonist, Garcia is keen to stress the various hats she wears, – especially on her albums – as a composer, a writer, in charge of the arranging and the orchestration, alongside her own performance. ‘I think it’s just one of those things, you almost have to bang people over the head with what you can do,’ she sighs, ‘especially when you’re a woman, to be understood and not placed in a box by the things that people say about you.’ Still, she believes the music should ultimately do the talking – and on Odyssey, you can hear the big, beautiful, cohesive vision that has come from one person.
None of this is to say that community isn’t important: far from it. The social aspect of music has always been an integral support structure for Garcia, especially back in those early days. As a kid, she was heavily involved in Camden Music Service, attended youth music workshops at the Roundhouse – where she first connected with Cross – and joined a junior jazz programme at the Royal Academy of Music (accordingly, she worries about the current opportunities for young people amidst cuts to culture funding and youth centres). ‘It was incredibly inspiring having peers that were amazing musicians that you wanted to be as good as,’ she says, ‘or having visiting teachers come in or doing performances. They go well, they don’t go well. You learn something, whatever it may be – but that’s the kind of spirit that pushes you and keeps you wanting to show up each day.’
It was about ten years ago that the press began to pick up on this exciting new wave of ‘London jazz’, the ‘jazz explosion’ etc; labels that were something of a mixed blessing for a group of fledgling musicians finding their feet. Now time has passed since that whirlwind of attention, how does Garcia feel about how she and her peers were presented? ‘At the time, it was quite surreal, because it felt a bit unprecedented to our specific area of music,’ she says, slowly. ‘That’s not to say that jazz hasn’t been popular in the past – it has, but I think there was this moderness that was allowed to be in the same breath whilst talking about jazz. And that’s something I always celebrate, because I think people really want to place jazz in a historical box or an American box.’ Though she recognises the level of coverage could sometimes work against them, given people’s innate tendency to baulk at things that are ‘too popular’, overall Garcia feels that era was only a positive thing. ‘I think the purpose of it is to get the music to more people, and that is a great thing,’ she shrugs, ‘for me, it changed my life.’
‘You almost have to bang people over the head with what you can do, especially when you’re a woman, to be understood and not placed in a box by the things that people say about you’
It helps that Garcia’s been doing this a long time – jazz was never a passing hype for her. Around the age of 16, she began attending bassist Gary Crosby’s Tomorrow’s Warriors (who incidentally are resident at Southbank Centre) alongside future collaborator Boyd, an experience which she feels was pivotal to her self-belief. ‘It was just a very different environment to the ones that I’d grown up in, which were quite White and quite full of guys,’ she explains, remembering her first visit to a blues workshop Tomorrow’s Warriors was running. ‘So when I walked in and it was super Black, and there were loads of women – young women – that was a huge first for me… I didn’t have the words for it at the time, but the representation was incredible after so many years being in music.’
Garcia played many shows with Tomorrow’s Warriors here at the Southbank Centre in those first few years; as such, returning to the Southbank Centre to play as part of Little Simz’ Meltdown offers something of a full circle moment. Did she ever think back then that one day she’d be performing headline shows at the venue? ‘Absolutely not,’ she laughs, ‘but I think I also very quickly learned not to place other people’s glass ceilings upon myself.’
‘I very quickly learned not to place other people’s glass ceilings upon myself’
Garcia’s career has been one of determination, dedication and openness to the muse of creativity. It’s no wonder she’s talking about hopes to try out film scoring next; as both performer and creator, her music weaves sonic webs of stratospheric, magical storytelling.
Rather than Gladwell’s optimal 10,000, it’s probably been nearer to 100,000 hours practice by now – but Garcia knows she’s always been on the right path. ‘I’ve met people who have only had the spark of finding their thing much later, or maybe not at all. So I realise that it can be quite rare to find purpose so young; to go where you enjoy the feeling.’ Garcia smiles, ‘it’s a privilege.’
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