Juliette Gréco, Barbican

Juliette Gréco has shaped the way we think about the modern chanson. Her voice, passionate and lyrical, set amid whirling string and accordion arrangements; her lifestyle, decidedly bohemian. A doyenne of Paris’ Left Bank in the ‘50s and ‘60s, she provided the soundtrack for late existentialism. Clad in her signature black turtle-neck, she hung out with Simone De Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sarte, the latter even wrote lyrics for her. She fell in love with Miles Davis, and starred in movies by Jean Cocteau.

Now aged 89, her music has lost none of its evocative power, still reverberating with the same poeticism that first caught audiences' attention. From the bittersweet lilt of ‘Si tu t’imagines’ or ‘Coin de rue’ to the romance of ‘Sous le ciel de Paris,’ her back catalogue deserves to be both revisited and discovered anew. Few can conjure the atmosphere of the French capital, and the lives that are lived there, as she can.

On June 13, she brings a touch of Parisian glamour to London’s finest brutalist concert hall. Book now for the Barbican show, which sees Gréco perform alongside her husband and pianist Gerard Jouannest and accordion master Jean-Louis Matinier.