Jane Birkin By Friends: a tribute concert at the Olympia this Saturday

Fanny Ardant, Beth Gibbons (Portishead) and her daughters Lou Doillon and Charlotte Gainsbourg: a tribute concert brings together around twenty artists on Saturday at the Olympia in Paris, to say goodbye on stage to Jane Birkin, who died in the summer 2023, at age 76.

This Jane Birkin by friends show, performed for the benefit of Restos du Coeur, is based on an elegant casting made up of “friends, close friends, artists with whom she collaborated or whom she loved”, described for the 'AFP Jean-Louis Piérot, musical director of the event. This multi-talented musician, in tandem with his accomplice Etienne Daho, tailor-made the latest album, Oh! Sorry, you were sleeping... (2020), from the French's favorite Englishwoman.

It is the concert created to defend this record on stage - a show which also includes classics like Les sous chics, for example - which is performed at L'Olympia. That is to say around twenty titles and as many performers, including, in addition to those already mentioned, Dominique A, Carla Bruni, Jarvis Cocker, Marion Cotillard, Thomas Dutronc, Arthur H, Keren Ann, Sandrine Kiberlain, -M-, Abd Al Malik, Mickey 3D, Miossec, Vanessa Paradis, Eddy de Pretto and Catherine Ringer.

Various health problems had thwarted the tour of Jane Birkin, who, each time she felt better, had asked her historic manager Olivier Gluzman to find her a new date for the Olympia. “She absolutely insisted on it and, after her funeral, we said to ourselves with Olivier and Étienne that we were going to do at the Olympia, strictly, the concert that we were supposed to do there with Jane,” continues Jean-Louis Piérot.

“Unlike the usual tributes, the guest artists will have to follow in Jane's footsteps on stage, for a show made with the same musicians and the same arrangements as those planned for her.” “We, his musicians, are all very apprehensive. Emotionally, moments may be difficult but this concert will allow us to mourn Jane's musical mourning,” concludes Jean-Louis Piérot.

Dominique A had written for Jane Birkin the song Where is the city? on the album Fictions (2006), where we also found the Englishwoman Beth Gibbons, voice of Portishead, behind the title My secret. At the Olympia he will sing one of the poignant songs from Oh! Sorry you were sleeping... in which Jane Birkin addressed the death of her daughter Kate, These thick walls (“Me outside, you below, mute, mute cry”).

"Oh ! Sorry you were sleeping..., it's a bit of a family portrait, a cathartic album", summarizes Dominique A, seduced by the singing of Jane Birkin, "becoming more and more inhabited over the years". “Jane had this ability to transmit an emotion, an experience. We feel the life passing through his voice,” the singer further emphasizes. "Oh ! Sorry, you were sleeping..., this record is so personal,” Jane Birkin confided to AFP at the time of its release. “As Serge (Gainsbourg) said, when it’s “banal blue”, everything is smooth, sublime, we are not tempted to write. When there is separation, injury, then we see William Turner-style clouds arriving,” she added. Quoting one of the men of his life and an English impressionist, in whom, both, light coexisted with a dark side.