Jazz Articles about Zara McFarlane

About Zara McFarlane

Radio & Podcasts

Zara McFarlane, Benjamin Sanz, Cinema Paradiso, Gilbert Holmström & More

by Ludovico Granvassu
October 8, 2024

From London to Stockholm, via New York, Paris, Chicago and Brussels, for a playlist that pays tribute to Marvin Gaye, Charles Mingus, African and African-American sources of inspiration, and much more. Happy listening! Playlist Ben Allison “Mondo Jazz Theme (feat. Ted Nash & Pyeng Threadgill)" 0:00 Zara McFarlane “Inner City Blues" Sweet Whispers: Celebrating Sarah Vaughan (Eternal Source of Light) 0:16 Host talks 4:52 Lauren Henderson “Walking" Sombras (Brontosaurus) 6:04 Host talks 11:11 Benjamin Sanz ...

Album Review

Zara McFarlane: Sweet Whispers: Celebrating Sarah Vaughan

Read "Sweet Whispers: Celebrating Sarah Vaughan" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
June 7, 2024

Zara McFarlane's fifth album--a recording that actually fits the vogueish description “project"--represents a marked change of focus for the singer, from London to New York City and points west. Closely associated with London's radical underground jazz scene, McFarlane has previously peopled her touring and recording bands with fellow adventurers such Shabaka Hutchings, Shirley Tetteh, Idris Rahman, Robin Hopcraft, Nathaniel Cross, Binker Golding and Moses Boyd. Significantly, too, McFarlane has also written the vast majority of the material she has recorded, ...

Album Review

Nicola Conte: Umoja

by Chris May
June 7, 2023

Nicola Conte continues on his journey from acid-jazz bohemian to spiritual-jazz sophisticate with this immaculately hip album, fronted on half of its tracks by London-based soul-jazz divas Zara McFarlane and Bridgette Amofah. Conte began his trajectory with the acid-jazz template Jet Sounds (Schema, 2000), boosted it with Jet Sounds Revisited (Schema, 2002) and, after a brief post-hard-bop detour with Other Directions (Blue Note, 2004), began the spiritual-jazz ascent which has in 2023 reached its new, lofty apogee with ...

Radio & Podcasts

Women in Jazz: Fabulous Singing, Part 1

by Russell Perry
March 16, 2021

The past decade has been a great one for lovers of jazz singing with most of the exciting music coming from women vocalists. In this hour and the next of Jazz at 100 Today! we'll survey 20 releases from 15 female vocalists who range from the rediscovered vintage jazz of Catherine Russell to the powerful hybrid music of newcomer Zara McFarlane. We are celebrating Women's History Month on Jazz at 100 Today! Playlist Host Intro 0:00 Sara Gazarek ...

Catching Up With

Zara McFarlane: ritmi e lingue ancestrali

by Serena Antinucci
July 27, 2020

Songs of an Unknown Tongue (Brownswood Recordings) è il quarto album della pluripremiata cantante inglese Zara McFarlane. A tre anni dal precedente Arise (Brownswood, 2017), la cantante compie un'operazione più personale, di ricerca approfondita delle sue radici musicali e culturali. Dopo un viaggio alla ricerca delle sue radici in Giamaica, McFarlane apre il jazz alle influenze della tradizione caraibica, ai ritmi ancestrali che dialogano con suoni e beat contemporanei, in una rete che si intensifica passaggio dopo passaggio. Il successo ...

Catching Up With

Zara McFarlane: Ancestral Tongues

by Serena Antinucci
July 18, 2020

Songs of An Unknown Tongue is the fourth album by multi-award winning English singer Zara Mcfarlane, released on July 17 on Brownswood Recordings. Three years on from Arise!, also on the Brownswood label, the singer performs a more personal, in-depth exploration of her musical and cultural roots. After a journey in Jamaica, her ancestral motherland, McFarlane opens jazz to the influences of the Caribbean tradition, to ancient rhythms that dialogue with contemporary sounds and beats, in a network that intensifies ...

Album Review

Zara McFarlane: Songs Of An Unknown Tongue

Read "Songs Of An Unknown Tongue" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
July 14, 2020

It takes courage for a musician to depart from a successful recipe to the extent that the British singer and songwriter Zara McFarlane does on Songs of An Unknown Tongue. The disc is not a complete shift from the paradigm of her three previous albums, but it is a radical spin on it. First, what has changed. McFarlane's last album, Arise (Brownswood, 2017) was, like its predecessors, an acoustic set played by a band drawn from McFarlane's ...