Nicole McCabe is an alto saxophonist, composer and educator from Marin County, California who works and lives in Los Angeles. A rising star in the city’s interdisciplinary scenes, she recently released Mosaic, her fourth album as a bandleader, on Ghost Note Records. The LP follows Landscapes on the Spanish label Fresh Sound and her 2020 debut Introducing Nicole McCabe on Minaret. What Is My Porpoise?, the latest album from her electro-jazz duo with bassist and partner Logan Kane, is forthcoming on Dox.

Mosaic, executive produced by Jeff Parker, showcases McCabe’s complex tone and expanding structural sensibility in a post-bop tradition that she plies with studied creative verve and surprise. To record these through-composed works, she formed a new band featuring Kane, drummer Tim Angulo and pianist Julius Rodriguez, with appearances by Jon Hatamiya on trombone, Aaron Janik on trumpet and Parker on guitar. The album features music that McCabe wrote during Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead residency at the Kennedy Center under the tutelage of Jason Moran, as well as that workshopped with mentor Patrice Rushen for the Los Angeles Jazz Society’s New Note Jazz Award.

McCabe has otherwise performed or recorded with Ari Hoenig, Dan Weiss, David Binney, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Gerald Clayton, Sasha Berliner, Genevieve Artadi, Dave Harrington, and 10.4 Rog, to name a few. Frequent collaborators Louis Cole and Justin Brown appear on Dolphin Hyperspace’s new album. McCabe’s constellation grew further with a 2023 residency at Los Angeles improvised music hub ETA in its final months, and she is a regular presence at Altamira Sound, where she recorded Mosaic and 2022’s Improvisations, a solo work for saxophone and pedals. Earlier this year, Fresh Sound released McCabe’s Live at Jamboree, a performance in Barcelona with Kane, Iannis Obiols and Ramon Prats.

A teacher since high school, McCabe is currently an educator and jazz ensemble director at Loyola Marymount University and a mentor in California State University, Northridge’s Jazz Studies program. She also teaches at Los Angeles public schools through the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz program Jazz in the Classroom. She earned a Master’s from University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music and a Bachelor of Music in Jazz Studies at Portland State University.

Photo by George Harris