Zara McFarlane

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Zara McFarlane (born May 16, 1983 in London ) is a British jazz / soul singer and songwriter. In October 2014 McFarlane received the title "Best Jazz Act" at the MOBO Awards.

Live and act

McFarlane grew up as the child of Jamaican parents on the border between East London and Essex. She first appeared on television at the age of 14, where she performed a song by Lauryn Hill on Stars in Their Eyes . She attended BRIT School, the Tech Music School at the University of West London and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama , where she developed her love for jazz.

At Tomorrow's Warriors she met many of the musicians she works with today. The first recordings were made with the Houseact Bopstar . A debut EP under his own name followed in 2010, but did not attract much attention. That changed when Gilles Peterson signed her to Brownswood and released her album Until Tomorrow in the fall of 2011.

Her second album, If You Knew Her , was also released by Brownswood in 2014 and won the MOBO award in the category “best jazz act”. Her third album Arise , released in 2017, took her deeper into the Afro-Caribbean . She had television and radio appearances all over Europe. She can also be heard on the albums Brownswood Bubblers Seven by Gilles Peterson and Christmas Soul by Barbara Dennerlein and Magnus Lindgren ( MPS , 2015). McFarlane has also recorded and / or performed with Denys Baptiste , Nicola Conte ( Ogun ), Jazz Jamaica , Soweto Kinch , Orphy Robinson and Louie Vega . McFarlane has twice been named Singer of the Year by Jazz FM .

Discographic notes

  • Until Tomorrow (Brownswood, 2011)
  • If You Knew Her (Brownswood, 2014)
  • Arise (Brownswood, 2017; with Moses Boyd , Shabaka Hutchings , Binker Golding , Nathaniel Cross, Max Luthert, Peter Edwards, Neil Charles, Shirley Tetteh)
  • East of the River Nile (Brownswood, 2019; EP)
  • Songs of an Unknown Tongue (2020)

Web presence

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ biography
  2. ↑ The New One (jazzthing 2011)
  3. ↑ Meeting (AllAboutJazz)
  4. ↑ Zara McFarlane returns with Songs of an Unknown Tongue. In: Jazzwise . June 15, 2020, accessed July 4, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME McFarlane, Zara
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British jazz and soul singer and songwriter
DATE OF BIRTH May 16, 1983
PLACE OF BIRTH London