JAZZ chanteuse Tina May read French at university, her studies taking her to Paris for a year in 1982.

“I remember that Piaf’s music seemed to be coming out of everywhere, wherever you went,” she recalls of the birth of her passion for the Little Sparrow.

Tina’s prowess en Francais has given her the tools for performing a tribute in which her singing glides from French to English and back again.

Dressed in trademark Piaf black dress, Tina is an engaging storyteller and mimic too, entertaining her Friday cabaret audience with her impersonation of Piaf speaking over-enunciated English.

Her guided tour of Piaf’s rise from Parisian poverty to the world’s highest-paid entertainer is insightful, celebratory and poignant, providing the context to two sets of Piaf songs.

These are performed with pianist Nikki Iles, double-bass player Julie Walkington and accordionist Karen Street, a superb all-female line-up that adds to Piaf’s feminine potency.

Tina’s singing is not an impersonation but an interpretation, always heartfelt, sometimes humorous, and highlights are plentiful, from Si Tu Partais to Milord, l’Accordéoniste to the inevitable encore of Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien.

This Anglo-French alliance is a night of song and revelation that puts more flesh on the Little Sparrow’s story beyond the grim grit of the film La Vie En Rose and Pam Gems’ play Piaf. No mean feat.