The French Institute Alliance Française Presents Jane Birkin in Concert 2/11, 2/12

The French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF), New York's premiere French cultural center, will welcome back legendary French chanteuse Jane Birkin for two evening performances on her Enfants d'Hiver World Tour. On February 11 and 12, Birkin will make a single stop in New York at FIAF, returning to Florence Gould Hall following her 2003 Arabesque concerts.

An accomplished singer and actress, Birkin began her career in the 1960's and was the other half of France's legendary couple with singer and provocateur Serge Gainsbourg. Both as a lover and then a friend, Gainsbourg provided lyrics and inspiration for Birkin for twenty-five years until his death in 1991. While continuing to work on both stage and screen, Birkin's love for music continued after Gainsbourg's passing and she recorded six more albums, the most recent of which is Enfants d'Hiver, released in November 2008.

Enfants d'Hiver marks Birkin's first foray into songwriting and features the singer's penchant for nostalgia, her breathy voice, and musings on the passage of time. The set list for the FIAF show is a heady mix of old and new, giving Gainsbourg fans a reason to rejoice and Birkin fans a new dose of her talent to savor.

A portion of the proceeds from ticket sales will benefit the Mae Tao Clinic, which provides free health care for Burmese refugees on the Thai border.

On Stage

Jane Birkin

Piano: Frederic Maggi

Cello: Dominique Pinto

Contrabass, bass: Ilan Abou

Guitars, keybords: Nicolas Dubosc
Lighting: Philippe Berthomé

Artistic director: Edith Fambuena

About Jane Birkin

Jane Birkin was born in London on December 14, 1946, to actress Judy Campbell and Royal Navy lieutenant-commander David Birkin. She began her acting career at age 17 and soon met John Barry, who cast her in his musical Passion Flower Hotel in 1965. They married shortly after, and had a daughter, Kate, in 1967.
At the age of 20, Jane attracted some attention in Blowup, a controversial film by Antonioni that won an award at the Cannes Film Festival. Then, in France, she auditioned for a role in the film Slogan - director Pierre Grimblat was scouting around for an English actress to play opposite Serge Gainsbourg. At that point the singer had already achieved some celebrity in the fringes of the early 60s pop movement, but was having a hard time getting over his recent breakup with Brigitte Bardot. Jane showed up for the screen test barely able to speak French and knowing nothing about her co-star. She bore the brunt of his heartache: surlier than usual, he gave her a hard time, on at least one occasion causing the frightened young actress to burst into tears in front of the camera.
Yet this is how their legendary love affair began, in Paris of 1969. They were soon inseparable, becoming cult fixtures of the ‘underground' bars where post-1968 libertarian winds blew. The pair recorded their lascivious and languid "Je T'aime... Moi Non Plus," Jane lending her ingenuousness to the song's explicit eroticism and making a name for herself as a singer. The scandalous track appeared in the 1969 album Jane Birkin Serge Gainsbourg, on which Jane had four solo songs in addition to several other duets with Serge, including the ever-popular "69 Année Erotique." Heavily censored, the album sold a million copies in just a few months. The couple made the cover of countless magazines, were constantly in the media spotlight, and had a lot of fun in the process. Their daughter Charlotte was born in 1971.

In 1973 Jane released Di Doo Dah, her first solo album. The same year, she proved herself as a dramatic actress, in particular taking a tragic role in Jacques Rouffio's Seven Deaths by Prescription. Although these performances may have been eclipsed by the erotic-kitsch mawkishness of the moment, the delicate and refined Jane willingly assumed the role of the ethereal English beauty attributed to her, which spurred the commercial success of these productions. She was also largely responsible for the popular success of two Claude Zidi comedies in which she starred in 1974 and 1975: Lucky Pierre and The Wild Goose Chase with Pierre Richard.
In 1975, the turbulent lovers were back with Je T'aime... Moi Non Plus, the film, in which budding director Gainsbourg explores a theme of homosexuality heightened by the ambiguity of his androgynous muse. Puritan France was outraged and critics panned the film. Jane turned her focus back to the recording studios. She released Lolita Go Home that same year, singing Philippe Labro's lyrics to Serge's music. In 1978, she won the public over with Ex-Fan Des Sixties, seducing them with her slightly acid tone, her sharp but breathy voice and the cotton padding she gave to Serge's tortured lyrics.

Jane left Serge in 1981, moving in with Jacques Doillon, director of The Prodigal Daughter and La Pirate, who helped the actress develop a decidedly dramatic style. Serge suffered greatly from this separation and admitted as much to her, albeit discreetly, via his lyrics and music for her album Baby Alone in Babylon. As always, Jane perfectly captured the writer's inner turmoil, making the separated lovers' enduring bond tremble in every note of "Fuir Le Bonheur De Peur Qu'Il Ne Se Sauve," "Les Dessous Chics" and "Norma Jean Baker." The 80s were glamorous, and Jane's life was golden.

1982 saw the birth of Lou, her daughter with Doillon. Her new album went gold and directors such as Jacques Rivette and Régis Wargnier appreciated her artistic sensitivity. Jane tried her hand at theatre for the first time in 1985, taking a role in Marivaux's La Fausse Suivante, directed by Patrice Chéreau, at the Théâtre des Amandiers in Nanterre. After the release of her album Lost Song in 1987, Jane agreed to give a concert - her very first - at the Bataclan 'to shock Serge.' The minimalist set designed by her artistic director Philippe Lerichomme was well suited to the tender and poetic mood of the performance comprising 20 songs, one of which was a poignant cover of Léo Ferré's "Avec le Temps." It was a hit. At the approach of her fortieth birthday, Jane had blossomed as a full-fledged artist, ready to turn the page on her seemingly eternal adolescence.

Also in 1987, director Agnès Varda filmed Jane B. Par Agnès V., an experimental documentary featuring dialogue between the two women in the form of mini-sketches and mini-confessions with appearances by Alain Souchon, Philippe Léotard, Farid Chopel and Serge Gainsbourg, among others. This helped Jane rise in status from pop star to serious actress sought after for a variety of roles by leading filmmakers.

In 1990, Jane Starred alongside Dirk Bogarde and Odette Laure in Bertrand Tavernier's Daddy Nostalgia, playing a woman who visits her parents in the south of France during the last few days of father's life. Amid shared memories and tender emotions, the three are able to find a moment of true happiness before the final separation. The film received much critical acclaim: Bogarde won the award for Best Actor at the Valladolid International Film Festival, Laure was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the César Awards and the film made the Cannes Film Festival's Official Selection.

That same year, Gainsbourg penned a new album for her: Amours des Feintes. It was to be the last - he passed away on March 2, 1991. Tragically for Jane, her father David Birkin also died just a few days later. She was crushed. When she appeared on stage at the Casino de Paris, the audience's mood was contemplative and the emotion palpable. Nobody could help thinking of her recent statement: 'I am going to give up singing. I just can't imagine recording with anyone else.'

Supported by her family and friends, Jane ended her tour at Francofolies de la Rochelle in July 1992 by placing the mike on the floor as a symbolic gesture, her way of saying goodbye to Serge. The idea of stopping took the strain off of her. She sought refuge in the intimacy of writing and devoted herself to what was most dear to her: her family and her humanitarian work. She sang on behalf of Amnesty International, made a short film for the battle against AIDS and set off for Sarajevo during the war to support the French humanitarian association Paris-Sarajevo-Europe.

Fans who urged her to continue 'singing Serge' had their wish granted in 1996 with the release of Versions Jane, on which various artists such as Goran Bregovic and Senegalese percussionist Doudou N'Diaye Rose re-arranged 15 titles from Gainsbourg's early days. The album had a nostalgic feel overall, but the public was particularly appreciative of "La Gadoue" and its lively rhythm, revamped by Les Négresses Vertes thirty years after the original version.

In 1998 Jane recorded A La Légère. In this new venture, which she described as 'total infidelity,' she invited 12 composers to write 12 original songs. Although it was the first time that Gainsbourg had written neither the lyrics nor the music for an album of Jane's, he was clearly the inspiration behind each song. The contributors included Chamfort, Souchon, Voulzy, Françoise Hardy, MC Solaar, Lavoine, Daho and Zazie, who provided "C'est Comme Ça," and its loaded lyrics: 'I won't say another word about you/It's better like that/In the future, others will make me speak.' These words, easy to miss in a first listen, soon impressed Jane as the logical conclusion for an album that was 'every bit as discreet as she could have hoped.' The singer took risks, found a new tone, and tackled the challenges with a crystal-clear voice, lighter than before, just as she herself had become.

In 2002 Jane decided to promote Gainsbourg mainstays such as "Elisa," "Les Dessous Chics," her favourite song, and "Amours Des Feintes" in her own unique way, giving the music an oriental spin ‘with a style blending Algerian, Andalusian, Jewish and Gypsy influences.' She was thrilled by the idea of introducing his work to young audiences all over the world. For this new tour, called Arabesque, Philippe Lerichomme suggested that she work with Algerian violinist Djamel Benyelles, whose bow made Gainsbourg's songs quiver to the tune of Arabic interludes. Jane swayed to the rhythm by his side, barefoot and clad in a long blood-red dress. She sang "Les Clés du Paradis" surrounded by Aziz Boularouq (percussion), Fred Maggi (piano) and Amel Riahi el Mansouri (lute). Launched at the Festival of Avignon in 1999, then repeated in Algeria, several other French cities and at the Odéon theatre in Paris in March 2001, Arabesque was a fun new experience for Jane's enthusiastic fans, who applauded her with a standing ovation. She got the festival atmosphere of her dreams, and for a show that had seemed unthinkable just a few years before. In 2003, Jane continued the Arabesque tour in France, as well as in London, Spain, Italy, Germany, Canada, New York and Asia. Filmed at the Odéon, it was released on CD and DVD by Capitol in late October 2002.

With her 2004 album Rendez-Vous, a collection of duets with Françoise Hardy, Bryan Ferry, Etienne Daho, Brian Molko, Miossec and Beth Gibbons, to name a few, Jane tried to find her own harmony in the harmonies of others. But Rendez-Vous ultimately fell short of the mark, leaving her halfway between herself and others, between France and England, between desire and quest. Suddenly she felt the need to ‘go home,' and it's with these words, in an uneasy equilibrium between two very different languages, that she explains it best: "The initial inspiration for the album was "Home" by Neil Hannon (Divine Comedy), and that's what it was, more or less, going home. But then I asked myself what the hell for... For whom? My mother's dead, My father's dead. What am I doing? I carefully avoid Chelsea, even all of Kensington. It's off limits, like a crime scene. It's all taped up to stop me from going any further back to my childhood I don't want to check to make sure it isn't there. From now on I'll stick to places I don't know."

Naturally enough for an artist like Jane, determined to follow her feelings, Fictions turned out to be something quite different. Never short on imagination when it comes to sampling all that life has to offer, she conjured up an array of moods in the form of her most personal album since Ex-Fan Des Sixties in 1978. One of her best talents is her ability to take songs by others and make them her own. In the past it wasn't just Serge speaking through her voice - it was also Jane inspiring him. For Fictions‚ and with good reason, since they're her own songs‚ she carefully selected a number of songwriters including Neil Hannon, Beth Gibbons, Rufus Wainwright, Arthur H and Dominique A, each a willing knight at her service, working under the leadership of producers Renaud Letang and Gonzales, the noteworthy orchestrators of Rendez-Vous. Their songs appeared alongside covers of classics by greats such as Tom Waits, Kate Bush and Neil Young. On this album, whose songs are mostly in English, Jane's voice nestles with a sweetness rarely achieved before among deceptively fragile arrangements set off by the likes of ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr (and Marr doesn't take out his axe for just anyone these days), Bryan Ferry and the Pet Shop Boys. Jane put a lot of herself into Fictions - more than enough to keep pleasing her fans on both sides of the Channel. Home for Jane is neither France nor England now, but rather the hearts of those who love her: "I've been a displaced person for most of my life and it's a bit inappropriate to try to find out if people think I have talent. I needed to go and see. It's strange being part of other people's lives. Sometimes you feel like sailing without a compass. This record started out with a destination, but in the end it changed into an adventure that brought me back here, to where I am."

After a return to the theatre, acting in Sophocles' Electra from November 2006 to March 2007 (at the Théâtre des Amandiers in Nanterre and in 15 other cities in France), she made her directorial début with Boxes, a feature film. She starred in it as well, together with Michel Piccoli, Géraldine Chaplin, Maurice Bénichou, Tcheky Karyo, Natacha Régnier and Lou Doillon. The film made the 2007 Cannes Film Festival's Official Selection (out of contest).

Boxes takes us to the seaside in Brittany, where Anna, age 50, has just moved into her new house. The rooms are filled with moving boxes containing countless possessions, countless memories. Anna has lived many lives and her past emerges from the boxes bit by bit. When she opens them, the people who mattered in her life appear. Her parents, of course, and her children and their fathers, the dead and the living. Anna has three daughters, each from a different father. Her three men are now here and, like her parents and children, they have come to talk with her, rage against her and perhaps forgive her. At this disorienting time in her life, with time getting shorter and shorter, Anna finds what she needs to face the past and try to look into the future. And just maybe to learn to believe in love again.

On top of her many personal fights for human rights among which the liberation of Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, Jane has been on the road again since she has finished Jacques Rivette's new film, Around a Small Mountain, at the end of summer 2008.

Her Enfants d'Hiver Tour presents a blend of Gainsbourg's classics, less known tracks and her own material (taken from the EMI album "Enfants d'Hiver," released in 2008 and featuring exclusively Birkin lyrics.)

Next March 2010, her new movie co-starring Catherine Jacob and Caroline Cellier will hit cinemas.

FIAF, a not-for-profit organization created in 1898 by American Francophiles, is one of the largest and most respected centers of French-American activities in the United States, widely known as the home of New York's foremost French language school, the leading all-French library in the country, and New York's only performing arts center dedicated to French and Francophone culture. FIAF is dedicated to encouraging interaction and better understanding between French-speaking and American communities by creating programs in the arts and education that promote and enhance knowledge of French and Francophone culture.