Top British jazz singer Zoe McFarlane to be artist-in-residence at 2022 Cambridge Jazz Festival

Zara McFarlane, one of Britain’s foremost jazz vocalists, is the artist-in-residence at this year’s Cambridge Jazz Festival, which began last Thursday (November 10).

As part of her residency, audiences at the festival will have the chance to see Zara - a previous winner of the Jazz FM Award for Vocalist of the Year - perform live in two very different concerts.

“Yes, so I’m told!” laughs the affable singer-songwriter, when the subject of her being the artist-in-residence is raised.

“I was just asked to do it; I don’t know how it came about actually, but it was a nice thing to be asked to do.

“It means that I’m going to be featured a bit more during the festival. I’m going to be having two concerts - one with the Cambridge University Jazz Orchestra and then a duo performance, with voice and piano, to end the festival. That’s quite a nice thing to have two very different ways to showcase what I'm about, musically.”

Zara has always incorporated other styles of music into her sound and, like Courtney Pine, who featured in last week’s Cambridge Independent, started listening to reggae before she got into jazz.

“My parents are Jamaican so growing up I heard a lot of reggae music in the house,” she remembers. “Not really jazz particularly; I think I probably came to jazz through TV in some ways, seeing it in films, things like that."

Zara was first exposed to jazz through Nina Simone - “even though she didn't just do jazz music,” she notes. “I knew of Billie Holiday and Ella [Fitzgerald] on some levels, and when I started playing that in the house my mum knew all the songs already. But she wasn't playing them for me to hear - it was more reggae that I was hearing.”

At what point did the clearly very talented Zara decide to pursue music as a career?

“When I was about 11, I started writing songs,” she recalls, “or maybe before then... and then when I was about 16, I heard about a place called the BRIT School - very late actually.

“By the time I’d heard about it, I had like like a week or two weeks to try to apply to get in. I didn’t officially get in at first but then I got a reserve place, which meant that if someone couldn't go, or they decided not to go, then I might get a proper full place.”

Zara was eventually given an unconditional offer for a place at the South London-based performing arts school (Amy Winehouse was also there at around the same time as her, albeit briefly).

“It was a really great thing to do, I studied musical theatre there,” explains Zara, “and really that was where I probably delved further into jazz, but not directly because a lot of jazz songs are from musicals, when it comes to the vocals.

“So later on when I studied for my degree and there was a jazz module, it was like, ‘I know this song, I know this song, I know this song’ but I didn’t know them in a jazz context, I knew them as the original pieces that they were from the musicals.”

Zara, who also works as a vocal coach, has released four albums to date: Until Tomorrow (2011), If You Knew Her (2014), Arise (2017), and Songs of an Unknown Tongue (2020). She won a Mobo Award for Best Jazz Act in 2014 and an Urban Music Award a year later, also for Best Jazz Act. She holds a Masters degree in jazz studies from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

“At the moment I'm working on a new project based around Sarah Vaughan,” reveals the hard-working musician, “she’s one of my favourite jazz singers of all time. Over Covid I released an album, which was actually much more electronic. It wasn’t really a jazz album but I saw it as a continuation of my third album, which explored reggae and jazz and other historical elements based around being a black British person, the history of Jamaica, things like that.”

Zara will be appearing at West Road Concert Hall with the Cambridge University Jazz Orchestra (CUJO) on Sunday, November 20 (tickets are £6-£15 plus booking fee), and as part of a duo in a more intimate setting at Frankopan Hall, Jesus College, on Saturday, November 26. Tickets are priced at £15 (£12 concessions, £10 for under 25s) plus booking fee.

For more information, visit cambridgejazzfestival.info/home. For more on the artist, go to zaramcfarlane.com.