On Zara McFarlane’s second album, If You Knew Her, she puts her own stamp on the Junior Murvin classic Police And Thieves.

Its combination of a reggae origin and jazz aesthetic perfectly sums up McFarlane’s own musical inspirations and touchstones “My parents are Jamaican so there was a lot of reggae music around, mainly at parties and stuff,” she says, fresh from her debut appearance on Later With Jools Holland.

“I was part of a big family and any birthday was a big deal – there would be lots of people there and music would be a big part of the gathering.”

It was when she moved from her Dagenham high school to start studying musical theatre at Croydon’s Brit School that she encountered jazz.

“I love musicals – especially West Side Story, The Lion King and Hair – those are probably my top three of all time,” she says.

“There wasn’t much jazz being played in my house. I realised I loved a lot of songs from musicals that were jazz standards or in the jazz repertoire. We had a module of jazz, and one of my tutors complimented me about the style of my voice for that music.”

She ended up gigging with her tutor’s band, beginning a series of collaborations as a lead or backing singer, which included stints with the jazz collective Tomorrow’s Warriors and bassist Gary Crosby's spin-off project Jazz Jamaica.

“I’m still quite new to being an artist in my own right,” she admits.

“My first album only came out in 2011 – my experience has mostly been through working as a singer. I enjoy the challenge and the development that brings as a musician.

“I would like to continue working with other bands – I want to do remixes, live jazz stuff and sing with an orchestra. It’s important to me to keep developing. For me, being on stage and working with different people as opposed to just studying is always best.”

Aside from her recent Jools Holland experience, perhaps McFarlane’s biggest television exposure was as a 14-year-old, when she went on Stars In Their Eyes as Lauren Hill.

“It was a great experience,” she says. “I put myself in for it – I sent in a cassette tape of my voice. I don’t think it’s on YouTube yet.

It was a great opportunity to have as a teenager – to be on national television and sing and perform in the days before The X Factor.”

McFarlane doesn’t just interpret other people’s material – like her hero Nina Simone she also writes her own songs, and has done so since she was 11.

“I saw something awful on the news and started to write my own Heal The World kind of song,” she remembers. “I enjoyed doing it. I was quite creative as a child, I enjoyed drawing and dancing. Songwriting was a thing I started doing.”

As well as writing songs for herself, she penned tunes for her mother’s birthday, to be sung at school concerts and for performance in church.

“I’m not prolific,” she admits. “In the past I mainly wrote when I was inspired. Recently there have been times when I haven’t written for a year.

“When the second album began I had to go into a different way of writing – there wasn’t always time to sit and wait for inspiration to come. You have to encourage it along! Now I’m exploring new ways of writing and new styles – it’s quite fun.”

This second album has been described as a much more personal journey – something McFarlane puts down to the quest to write a perfect song for her family.

“I wanted to write a song about my mum and sister, an homage to the females in my family,” she says. “The song that came closest was Open Heart.

“The song I intended to write had a strong message about the strength of women. Having my family as inspiration meant the album ended up being about very personal things that had touched me in my life.”