Sara Colman has been a familiar face (and voice) across the city for many years. A Jazz Vocal Tutor at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire for over a decade, her latest album is What We’re Made Of. Released via the Digbeth-based Stoney Lane Records (home to releases by such artists as TG Collective and Gonimoblast), it combines several choice covers with Colman originals and co-writes, and marks a significant step-in in her career, which has spanned several other releases as well as collaborations with Laura Mvula, Mahalia and Liane Carroll.

Following an intimate gig on Birmingham Symphony Hall’s stage earlier in the year, she presents the album at the city’s CBSO Centre on Saturday 10 November 2018.

Is this your second solo album ...?
It’s actually my third! I made one in 1998/1999 – it was a very different album, Spellbound. It was self-penned but it was very … I guess the guys I was working with at the time were very into the Paul Weller / Carleen Anderson/ Blessed Burden kind of sound, and so it was a bit jazzy, it wasn’t that jazzy, more of a singer with a rocky-kind-of-band. So this is my second jazz album.

Ten years between Spellbound and Ready, then nine years to this one! Why the long gaps?
I think life took over a bit. Lots of things happening, it’s expensive making an album. I got a big bit of help from Arts Council England for this one, I was changing, I was trying to work out who I was, as a songwriter. In that time I did an MA in songwriting and learned a lot more about the craft of it and how to get beyond … when I was [writing] in my 20s and early 30s, a lot of it was about love, unrequited love, a lot of those kinds of things. Actually, when you get a bit more settled, when you get a bit older, those things are no longer in your life, so you look outwards to other things. So I needed to learn how to write about other things. I was also busy, busy doing other things. I worked with The Passion, the trio, on/ off, that overlapped with Ready. I also worked with Liane [Carroll] and Jacqui [Dankworth from The Passion] on workshops, I became quite busy as a teacher and did other bits of arranging. Also I spent a lot of time playing and singing covers, in bars, straddling that thing between standard singing and covers bands. I was doing reworks of tunes, and I spent a lot of time [playing] in places where people weren’t comfortable with live music or necessarily listening … you were playing as background music.

Was there a specific point where you felt you were ready to make the album? Or was it a gradual thing?
It was definitely more of a gradual sort of thing. I bought in some new instrumentation. Jonathan Silk [drums] did some amazing string writing, as did Jules [Jackson, double bass]. That was amazing. My relationship with [pianist] Rebecca Nash was [starting] maybe three years ago, and that needed to have a chance to really establish, both as friends as well as musical partners. That really shows itself on the album … as well as my partner, Steve Banks [guitar], we collaborated a bit more on this.

Is there a particular song that sums up the mood of the album, or a core theme?
I think the title track: What We’re Made Of. I spent a long time thinking about what the album could be called and I think the title track encapsulates the over-arching theme, and the lyric of that song – even though there are songs that very clearly deal with death, very clearly deal with the pain of letting your children go in the world and let them fall, things which are painful – the overarching theme is that we definitely get up and we look into the sun, and we are made of so much more than we allow ourselves to tap into. We are made to love, we are made to be in the world, we are made to communicate, reach out, be with other people. I think that’s the track that acts as an umbrella over everything else.

How did you come to select three covers?
The Joni Mitchell [All I Want] … I love too many Joni songs ... I love the sense of innocence of it. I really wanted to choose a Joni tune as she’s such a big influence. With the Paul Simon song [Still Crazy After All These Years], that was one I’ve been doing live. With Emila [Martensson] and Anthony [Marsden, both backing vocals], in the studio, we decided to do it around the piano for fun. We did it for a bit of social media. But it was such a lovely recording that Sam [Stoney Lane Records boss] said we had to put it on the album, as a little bonus track on the end, and I agreed. Sonically, it sounds a little different as it was recorded as if live, but it’s a lovely finish to the album. The Bill Frisell [Strange Meeting] was a melody, a piece that Steve [Banks, guitar] showed me. I didn’t know it. I loved the mood of it … it was so evocative. I tried to write something to it but there wasn’t enough rhythm in the melody to write what I wanted to, and so I wrote a new melody. [The lyrics tell] this lovely story of regret, sort of … the story of a man’s life and his regrets at losing a shining star from his life. I love the chord changes, the structure.

What We're Made Of is out now via Birmingham jazz label Stoney Lane Records.

Jazzlines presents Sara Colman: What We’re Made Of, Saturday 10 November 2018, CBSO Centre, Berkley Street, Birmingham B1 2LF. Details: www.thsh.co.uk

By Dave Freak