Tune in on Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on 90.1 FM, and streaming at wrti.org, for a new edition of The Late Set Radio Hour, featuring saxophonist, composer, and bandleader Nubya Garcia. It features excerpts from Garcia's appearance on The Late Set podcast.
Since bursting onto the London jazz scene in the mid-2010s, Nubya Garcia has become one of the defining voices of a generation of young British improvisers who draw as much on diaspora heritage as on the jazz tradition. Her debut record earned her a Mercury Prize nomination and a Parliamentary Jazz Award, and carried her to stages like the BBC Proms, Glastonbury, and Radio City Music Hall.
The hour centers on Garcia's 2024 sophomore album, Odyssey, an expansive project that found her writing for strings for the first time — the Chineke! Orchestra, Europe's first orchestra made up of majority Black and ethnically diverse musicians. Garcia talks about how close she came to scrapping the strings altogether, and what it meant to finally trust her own compositional voice.
From there, the episode traces the mentors who shaped her: pianist Nikki Yeoh, who gave a teenage Garcia her first sense of belonging in London's music scene; saxophonist Jean Toussaint, who taught her to “play to the back of the room”; and saxophonist Courtney Pine, who showed her what was possible for a Londoner with a horn. Garcia also reflects on Nérija, the seven-piece collective she came up with, her breakout moment on Gilles Peterson's We Out Here compilation, and a sold-out 2022 night opening for Khruangbin at Radio City Music Hall.
Setlist:
All music by Nubya Garcia unless otherwise noted
- “Odyssey” from the album Odyssey
- “Set It Free” (feat. Richie) from the album Odyssey
- “Stand With Each Other” (feat. Ms Maurice, Cassie Kinoshi, Richie Seivwright) from the album Source
- “Mr. Combinated” (Donald Harrison) by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers from the album Blue Night
- “My Father's Place” (Courtney Pine) by Courtney Pine from the album Back in the Day
- “Unbound” (Rosie Turton) by Nérija, from the album Blume
- “The Message Continues” from the album Khruangbin & Nubya Garcia: Live at Radio City Music Hall
Production Credits:
Alex Ariff, Senior Producer
Nicole Sweeney, Host
Robby Webb, Mixing Engineer
Nate Chinen and Greg Bryant, Interviewers
Jacob Dodd, Production Assistant
Special thanks to Judy Miller Silverman, Inez Leon, and the folks at Concord Jazz.