A product of Tomorrow’s Warriors – an organisation which nurtures young jazz talent from underrepresented communities – Zara McFarlane has been a steady, consistent presence in British jazz, releasing four original albums on Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood label.

Her next album, however, will pay homage to jazz icon Sarah Vaughan on the centenary of her birth. McFarlane trailed the album’s release with two sold-out houses at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, which she narrated with intelligence and intention, ably surveying key milestones from Vaughan’s career and personal life. Vocally, McFarlane does not evoke any obvious parallels to Vaughan, thus keeping the set from feeling imitative, but was able to harness the range and rhythmic command to manage this challenging catalogue.

Eschewing some of the George Gershwin and Cole Porter standards one might have expected, McFarlane prioritised songs considered proprietary to Vaughan. Opening with ‘Tenderly’, her set grew with confidence. She nodded to Vaughan’s church upbringing with ‘Great Day’, nailed the meandering rhythms of ‘Obsession’ (from Vaughan’s 1987 Brazilian Romance album) and was nothing short of delightful on Dizzy Gillespie’s gorgeous ‘Interlude’/’A Night in Tunisia’. Closing with Marvin Gaye’s ‘Inner City Blues’, which Vaughan recorded on her 1971 album A Time in My Life, was unexpected. But when so comfortably in the pocket, and perfectly in sync with her wonderful band, who cares?