Saxophonist Camilla George is the girl with the golden touch

Ahead of the EFG London Jazz Festival, in-demand saxophonist Camilla George talks to Jane Cornwell about her musical roots, the buzzing scene and the importance of experimentation
All that jazz: saxophonist Camilla George discusses what jazz means today
Benjamin Amure
Jane Cornwell3 November 2017

Rising stars rarely ascend at speed, especially those in jazz. Just ask Camilla George.

The London alto saxophonist has been immersed in jazz music for as long as she can remember, listening, practising, composing, practising some more. But it wasn’t until earlier this year that she really started making waves, what with a debut album, Isang, of inventive covers and sparkling originals that made you want to dance, and a national tour that had crowds swooning.

Recently nominated in the British Jazz Awards (in the Rising Star category alongside her friend, tenor sax player Nubya Garcia), this month George is playing two shows at the EFG London Jazz Festival, supporting Grammy-winning singer Dee Dee Bridgewater at Cadogan Hall, then headlining her own gig in Soho the following evening.

It’s been a slow climb up the career ladder for George, who has a knack for bold flights of improvisation and a way with origami-style headwraps. But finally her place in the jazz firmament looks assured.

“The London jazz scene is bubbling at the moment, which helps,” says George over tea at the Southbank Centre, where she has played with groups including Tomorrow’s Warriors Youth Jazz Orchestra (a respected outfit born from an initiative that offers musical opportunities to kids who might not otherwise have them) and its associated professional ensembles, Nu Civilisation Orchestra, and the British institution that is jazz/reggae big band Jazz Jamaica.

In August George was part of an all-dayer programmed for the South Bank by Jazz Re:freshed, whose DIY-style residencies see emerging and established talent joining forces, pushing boundaries and dazzling audiences.

“It is an enterprising, social media-savvy scene,” continues George. “There are new nights popping up everywhere. We’re being true to the spirit of jazz, which has always been the popular music of the day.”

The cross-pollination of styles and personnel at the heart of the scene is neatly summed up by George’s quartet. Pianist Sarah Tandy leads her own progressive trio. Bassist Daniel Casimir has lent his heavyweight upright sound to the up-and-coming likes of Moses Boyd, Ashley Henry and the aforementioned Garcia; drummer Femi Koleoso, 22, heads up jazz-meets-Afrobeat outfit Ezra Collective, and is beats man of choice for soulstress and Drake collaborator Jorja Smith. Oh, and Casimir and Koleoso sometimes feature in Tandy’s malleable trio, when they’re not all busy making music with Camilla George.

“The bebop scene of Forties and Fifties New York was buzzing with musicians from loads of different styles,” says George, who shares a flat with a black cat named Coltrane. “Proper jazz artists like Miles Davis were incorporating new techniques and sounds, always evolving and changing. Which is what is happening now. In London, LA, New York, everywhere, jazz is being mixed with things like grime, hip-hop and electronica, and it is not any less jazz.”

Long interested in tracing the African roots of jazz through to its modern forms, George has crafted a sound that embraces elements of Afrobeat, highlife and Caribbean calypso, as well as hip hop and blues. Isang — which means “journey” in the Ibibio-Efik language of south-east Nigeria, her birthplace — also features some melodious Ella Fitzgerald-style scatting from another former Tomorrow’s Warrior, the jazz/soul singer, Zara McFarlane.

“Zara has a voice like an angel,” says George of her longtime friend. “I’m not really a singer. We were both in a cab the other night and I was screeching along to Mariah, which reminded us why I stick to playing the sax.”

The only child of a British-Nigerian mother, a psychotherapist, and a Grenadian father, a tailor who worked on Savile Row, George was eight when she blew her first note on a saxophone. It was an old sax, a spare, brought out at a party. None of the adults could work it; only young Camilla, who loved dancing to the jazz records in her dad’s vinyl collection — by American bebop players Cannonball Adderley, Jackie McLean and Sonny Stitt, and Nigerian Afrobeat icon Fela Kuti — had the golden touch.

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Lessons, however, had to wait. “My parents invested everything in pursuing their African dream and moving to Nigeria, but my dad ended up being deported back to the UK, and we returned when I was a baby. They had to start again from scratch.”

Aged 11, George won a school music competition that offered free tuition and cheap rent on an instrument of choice. “Eventually the teacher told me about Tomorrow’s Warriors so I went to a Jazz Jamaica gig and met [founders and artistic directors] Gary and Janine Crosby,” she explains. “They have helped me so much over the years, even just by insisting that I keep coming back.”

George’s late father, for whom she penned the affecting ballad Songs for Reds (“His real name was Byron but his hair went red in the sun”), wanted his daughter to have options. So George packed up her sax and went and studied history at university in Birmingham, home to another thriving jazz scene.

On graduating she got a job as a fashion PR.“I needed a day job but it was all very Devil Wears Prada.” She shrugs good-naturedly. “The low point was being asked to collect the poo at a doggy fashion show. That’s when I knew I had to leave.”

In 2009 she was welcomed as a member of Jazz Jamaica and later as a Masters student at Trinity College of Music. In 2014 she joined Venus Warriors, an all-female group created by veteran British saxophonist and composer Courtney Pine, and formed her quartet later that same year. A self-released EP, Lunacity, gave a calypso twist to the standard It’s Only a Paper Moon, and threw in quotes from Sonny Rollins and Duke Ellington for good measure.

It hasn’t been easy. Early calls to promoters went unreturned. Musicians’ schedules clashed. A record deal was three years in the making. For that national tour earlier this year George even volunteered to drive the tour bus. “Whenever it got a bit hairy, Dan and Femi would throw each other this look and tighten their seatbelts. We were tired but we had a laugh,” she says. “You’ve got to have people in your band you like hanging out with.”

A new album based on African folk tales is in the works. There’s no rush, of course. “I’m lucky to be working in a genre, jazz, that allows you to mature and develop.

“It’s not about the destination.” George flashes a grin. “I’m travelling a long road.”

Camilla George plays Spice of Life, W1 (spiceoflifesoho.com) on Nov 17

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