Nubya Garcia, Credit: Will Hamilton Coates
Nubya Garcia performed at 170 Russell for Melbourne International Jazz Festival on Wednesday 23 October.
The atmosphere at London saxophonist Nubya Garcia’s first Australian gig in six years was reminiscent of an explosive rock show.
Uni students were air drumming and sharing enthusiastic grins each time Garcia rose into the altissimo register. Others, perhaps a decade or two older than the average 170 Russell gig-goer, expressed quiet satisfaction by moving their heads, jolting now and then due to a tempo shift or a stutter in drummer Sam Jones’ kick pattern.
Credit: Will Hamilton Coates
It was not easy-listening music – neither in category nor in affect – but the sensation induced was nevertheless dreamlike. For one thing, it’s hard to comprehend the availability of such immense and yet casually deployed talent. Garcia and her bandmates – Jones, keyboardist Lyle Barton and double bass player Max Luthert – are all the kind of prodigious instrumentalists who left their peers in the dust around the beginning of puberty.
Melbourne was the first stop on Garcia’s international tour behind album two, Odyssey, but nothing about the performance was rusty. The four instrumentalists are not only individually elite, but they’ve developed a kind of quadruplet cryptophasia, moving through complex and occasionally labyrinthine arrangements without losing each other or befogging the audience.
Credit: Will Hamilton Coates
Barton, on synth, electric piano and keyboard, was the classy offsider to Garcia’s scorching lead. Jones hit hard throughout, reminding us why the Spanish word for drums is “batería.” By the end of the new album’s physically demanding title track, the drummer appeared to be on the brink of delirium. By contrast, the show’s quietest moments came when everyone drew back to let Luthert’s double bass playing take the spotlight.
But it wasn’t all virtuosic improvisation and unholy lung power. What places Garcia and her tenor sax at the vanguard of contemporary jazz is her compositional elan. The 30-something-year-old demonstrated her knack for weaving memorable melodies into free-roaming, VU meter-busting sagas, and for drawing on soul, hip hop, dub, reggae and cumbia while also bringing traditionally-minded jazz listeners along for the ride.
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