Zara McFarlane

Born in London in 1983 and based in east London, Zara McFarlane develops a singing approach that links jazz, soul, reggae, house and contemporary experiments, with her family’s Jamaican heritage in the background. Trained notably at the BRIT School, at Vocaltech and then at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, she also passed through the Tomorrow’s Warriors collective, important in her grounding on the British jazz scene. Zara McFarlane released her first album, Until Tomorrow, in 2011, initially self-produced and then at Brownswood Recordings, the label with which If You Knew Her appeared in 2014, Arise in 2017 and Songs of an Unknown Tongue in 2020. Across these records, Zara McFarlane develops a vocal writing that is flexible and precise, between revisited standards, original compositions, rhythms drawn from British black music and explorations around Caribbean traditions. Songs of an Unknown Tongue thus relies on work carried out in Jamaica around ancient folk forms, reinserted in a frame mixing electronic and jazz. In 2024, Zara McFarlane releases Sweet Whispers: Celebrating Sarah Vaughan, recorded with Giacomo Smith, where she revisits the repertoire of Sarah Vaughan. Her trajectory also includes collaborations with Moses Boyd, Dennis Bovell, Nicola Conte, Ezra Collective or Soweto Kinch, as well as appearances on television, in theatre and on stages ranging from jazz to more cross-disciplinary formats.