Vincen García

Valencia, and the instrument nobody else wanted

García grew up in Valencia in a house where both parents were musicians, but he came to the bass late and for the least romantic reason available. He was sixteen, friends were putting a band together, and nobody else wanted the four-string. He never took formal lessons; he learned from YouTube and from sitting with the instrument for hours, and the self-taught part has followed him into every festival biography since.

From 2013 he began posting playing videos, and the clips did what clips do — the soloing and the groove work found an audience far outside Spain long before there was a record to sell them. That audience is the reason a bassist with no vocalist can sell out a room in Krakow.

His attack mixes slapped lines with fingerstyle, and he leans on palm muting to keep certain grooves tight and dry rather than ringing. As an improviser he prefers to begin with what he calls a long note or a simple phrase, on the grounds that starting quietly leaves somewhere to go. The names he returns to are Jaco Pastorius, Victor Wooten, Marcus Miller and Richard Bona, with Hadrien Feraud among the contemporaries; the bassline he singles out is Jaco's "Teen Town".

Two days' notice

The break came through a direct message. García wrote to the American guitarist Cory Wong asking whether he needed a bassist. Wong's regular player, Sonny T, was absent from the European leg of Wong's 2023 tour, and the reply García got back was a playlist, a tour manager's phone number and the line "See you two days!" He had forty-eight hours and roughly fifty songs to learn, with no rehearsal before the first show.

Recounting it to Guitar World in an interview published on 18 June 2024, García described the process as less about copying parts than owning them: he had to pick up the chords and make each bassline his own, and called it an experience he would never forget. He credited Wong's band for being relaxed about it and feeding him cues onstage on the opening night.

The sequence matters because it is the hinge. Before it he was a player other players followed online. After it he was a name European promoters would book on his own.

Ventura, then VIVACE

The debut, Ventura, arrived in 2023 — ten tracks of bass-led instrumental funk that he took out to Madrid, Barcelona, London, Los Angeles and New York. It was enough to get him billed as a leader at festivals that had previously only known him as a sideman.

VIVACE, the second album, was released on 13 January 2026 and runs to eleven tracks. He recorded it in a home studio and kept the bass chain almost bare: direct into a soundcard with light compression, both pickups wide open and the tone control somewhere between fifteen and thirty per cent, because he wants warmth rather than brightness. Most of it is his custom Yamaha BB, with a Fender Jazz Bass Ultra on "New Home" and a Bacci bass on "Enssaladilla Rusa". Jack Gardiner guests on guitar, Bárbara López and Andreew on vocals, with Lorenzo Ceci also credited.

García has said the record was composed while on tour and was inspired by concerts, experiences and travels, and that he went into it with a much clearer idea of what he wanted to do and how he wanted to sound than he had the first time. Several of the songs — "Melatonina", "Aprieta 2.0", "Todo Bien" and "París" — started as bass ideas rather than as chords or melodies, which is audible in how often the bass carries the tune outright.

Reviewing it for Sea of Tranquility on 20 January 2026, Eric Porter gave it four stars out of five, picked out "Aprieta 2.0", "Jet Lag" and "Punk Funk", praised the jaw-dropping musicianship and energy of the last of those, and called the album a can't-miss. The horns are the other constant: García writes the melody first, usually at a keyboard or on the bass, then layers guitar and brass around it.

Where he is now

Through 2025 he worked the festival circuit hard, playing Montreux — where the Vincen García Quintet appeared for the first time — and North Sea Jazz, and taking a support slot ahead of Herbie Hancock in Madrid, before finishing the second record.

2026 has been the touring year. He performed at the Bass Magazine Awards on 22 January, nine days after VIVACE came out. Latin America followed at the end of February, with São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile and Mexico City, and in March he ran a nineteen-day European tour through Norway, Germany, France, Georgia, Italy, Estonia and the Netherlands.

The summer was festivals. He made his JazzAscona debut in Switzerland with two late sets, on 3 July at 22:30 on the New Orleans stage and 4 July at 23:00 on the Elvezia stage. He returned to North Sea Jazz on 10 July, played the Chapiteau at Marciac on 23 July, Sala Apolo in Barcelona on 29 July, and Makarska in Croatia on 28 August.

The autumn run is short and spread wide: Rockstore in Montpellier on 6 October, Hype Park in Krakow on 10 October, Drizzly Grizzly in Gdansk on 11 October, Mühle Hunziken in Rubigen on 13 October, and a return to Barcelona at La (2) de Apolo on 7 November, promoted by Piñata and ticketed through DICE at €25 in advance or €30 on the door. Beyond that, Le Gueulard Plus in Nilvange is booked for 19 March 2027.

The band, and the noise it makes

The touring unit is a quintet with no singer: Victor Jiménez on saxophone, Manu Pardo on trumpet, Andoni Narvaez on guitar and Ben Wirjo on drums. It is the same personnel that played JazzAscona in early July and North Sea Jazz a week later, which suggests a settled band rather than a rotating pick-up.

Onstage García plays a custom Yamaha BBP34 — swamp ash body, maple neck, a Lollar pickup at the bridge and a Yamaha Precision-style pickup at the neck, active or passive, a finger ramp, a thinner neck than standard and a purple relic finish — through an Ampeg SVT head and an 8x10 cabinet. It is a loud, old-fashioned rig for a player whose studio tone is a DI, and the difference is the point: the records are warm, the shows push air.

Reviewing the North Sea Jazz performance for No Treble on 28 July 2026, Jody Miller wrote that there really is no one else who plays quite like this, crediting the combination of deep grooves, technique, melodic sense and rhythmic invention.