Jane Birkin celebrates life in Quebec City performance

London-born Jane Birkin will be in Quebec City this evening, performing a number of pieces that celebrate her life and the life of her late lover, Serge Gainsbourg.

Birkin will be taking to the stage just after 9 p.m. in Francophonie Park as part of the Festival d'été.

The Orchestre symphonique de Québec will accompany the 71-year-old singer and songwriter as she performs "many mythical pieces" arranged by the composer Nobuyuki Nakajima, states the festival's website.

Back in the late 60s, Birkin met Gainsbourg when auditioning for the French movie Slogan. Their subsequent relationship lasted more than a decade and, together, they had one of Birkin's three children, Charlotte Gainsbourg.

Gainsbourg, a French artist and producer, died in 1991, but Birkin has carried on his music in the nearly 30 years since. 

She has performed in Quebec a number of times.

'I'm here today because of friendship'

In an interview with CBC News on the eve of her Quebec City performance, Birkin said friendship is what keeps her going in the face of hardships.

"I'm here today because of friendship," she said, noting her best friends stayed close to her when her daughter, Kate Barry, died in 2013.

"When Kate died, I didn't know what to do. They were there constantly, every day. And when I was in hospital, they were there every day."

"[I was] very lucky to have had her for nearly 50 years," she said. "Some people lose them when they're 20."

Birkin had Barry when she was in her early 20s and, she told CBC,  "nothing mattered quite as much, because she was there. She was my reason, really."

"It's already wounding enough when you have anecdotes about them that perhaps they won't like anyway," she said. "Some things are better left unsaid."

'Tomorrow's another day'

Her diaries show a boarding school student worried about grades that grew into a young woman worried about pleasing her romantic partners like Gainsbourg, she said.

"It was just constant worry."

In later years, she said, life got more exciting.

"Exciting in that I was proud," she said, citing theater performances and "singing for the first time at 40, for real, at the Bataclan and then whizzing off to countries and singing under-the-carpet sort of things was much more interesting than when I was very young."

People develop with time, she said, and she encouraged younger people to keep their chins up.

"Tomorrow's another day, as my mother would say," Birkin said. "Things get better and you might even laugh, looking back on yourself and all the worries you had. You get over them and then life gets more interesting."