MOBO-winning London jazz singer Zara McFarlane has been quietly mastering her art for some time now, but new album ‘Arise’ is a brilliant distillation of what she can do. It doesn’t hurt that her collaborators – drummer/producer extraordinaire Moses Boyd, and the saxophone hurricane Binker Golding – have been on an unstoppable run this year; but it’s McFarlane’s own character and versatility that drives ‘Arise’, the unthinking ease with which she dips into reggae and pop, bringing an energetic power to the tightly-controlled arrangements. Connecting her Afro-Caribbean roots and the foremost frontiers of jazz creates a full circle of influence that feels instinctual in her hands: when Shabaka Hutchings shows up on album cut ‘Silhouette’, it feels like a meeting of minds. McFarlane is one of a number of young jazz artists breaking the mould at the minute, breathing a whole new life and breadth of influence into the genre: restrained on the chops, but wild and untameable in their synthesis of sounds into a powerful, singular whole.

Wed 7 Feb, 7.30pm at Hare and Hounds, High Street, Kings Heath, Birmingham B14 7JZ £14.30 skiddle.com