There are clichéd 'difficult second albums', and then there are those where you start almost from scratch. The difficulty with jazz prodigy Nubya Garcia's second LP, Odyssey, came when she decided that this new batch of songs she had written needed the sweeping majesty of a string section, before deciding to learn how to write and conduct it all herself.
It was a big step, she laughs on a baking hot summer's day in north London, her voice projecting equal amounts of pride and disbelief in how far she pushed herself in learning how to write for strings and then conduct a 12-piece orchestra for the very first time.
I'm so proud of doing it, she says with a beaming smile of her second album. That's part of discovering what you're going to make. I didn't write a list and say that these were all the things that I was going to do. The music started coming and flowing out, and within that I started wondering what it would sound like with this section. I subconsciously knew that I wanted strings and the epic, cinematic sound that they're associated with, but I just hadn't named it yet.
After getting her start on the violin (I hated it!), Garcia laughs that she went in on the recorder at school, before graduating to the clarinet and then the saxophone. It was only when she noticed a certain space and airiness to the demos she had laid down with her band for Odyssey that she became drawn back to the idea of strings.
This story is from the October/November 2024 edition of Rolling Stone UK.
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This story is from the October/November 2024 edition of Rolling Stone UK.
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