The violin weaved, the trumpet brought colour. Opening out chords on his keyboard, Nakajima played incisively and with precision. Onoe’s drumming was breakbeat sharp, even while ranging across the kit. Like the genre-hopping, jazz-loving Gainsbourg, Birkin and her band weren’t in thrall to traditions. Whatever the global nature of the players and music, this was a jazz-rooted show. Onoe also lives in Paris, while Yamane is resident in Berlin. As her arranger for this show, the Paris-based Nakajima has a grounding in the music of France while his own recordings cross genres. Nearly two years on, she’s still performing with them: pianist Nobuyuki Nakajima, drummer Ichiro Onoe, violinist Hoshiko Yamane and trumpet player Takuma Sakamoto. Gathering a group of Japanese musicians, she played Tokyo early that April, on the 20th anniversary of Gainsbourg's death, as a benefit for the disaster relief. But performing them live isn’t rare for her, even though she isn’t seen on British stages very often. As his muse, she has more right to carry the torch than anyone. Serge Gainsbourg’s songs are meat and potatoes to Jane Birkin. A sparse, emotion-filled “Une chose entre autres” - just her and piano – was the best I’ve ever seen her, the simplicity of the performance bringing a new dignity to the song.īilled as Jane Birkin Sings Serge Gainsbourg via Japan, this was a concert which has already crossed France and been seen in America and Australia – one she conceived after deciding she had to do something in the wake of the Japanese earthquake of March 2011.

Venturing into the audience for “Mon amour baiser” brought this intimacy even closer, especially when she darted up from the stalls to the balcony. Her delivery of “Fuir le bonheur de peur qu'il ne se sauve”, from her 1983 Baby Alone in Babylone album, was so sensitive it brought a man in front of me to tears. Like the genre-hopping, jazz-loving Gainsbourg, Birkin and her band weren’t in thrall to traditions Over 90 minutes, she roamed through his songs – ones she has recorded, and others he didn’t give away. Arriving on stage, head bowed, Birkin began the evening with “Requiem pour un con”, a song her former partner Serge Gainsbourg wrote for the film La Pacha in 1968.

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