RFI Musique: Your new album is called Solitaire - which is a bit of a strange title really as one readily imagines you surrounded by friends, always ready to join in the fun. Your new album is far from solitary, in fact. It's packed with duets…
Georges Moustaki: But the two aren't incompatible, you know! Solitaire is simply the name of a song, a song that happened to become the title track on the new album. When you're on your own, though, I think you're in a state where you're open to the rest of the world and I like the paradox in that. "Solitaire" is also the name of a diamond, of course. And it may sound a bit pretentious to say it, but I hope that this album has some of the beauty and purity of a diamond.

One of the outstanding features of your new album is the number of duets on it, five in all (two with China Forbes, one with Vincent Delerm, one with Stacey Kent and another with Cali). A good three decades stand between you and the younger artists you sing with on these…
Each of the duets on the album sprang from a different motivation. It's not like I turned round and fired a collective shot into the younger generation or something. Vincent Delerm, who I recorded Une Fille à bicyclette with, is someone with whom I became friends only recently. What happened there was we both wanted to team up and write a song together. It just felt like a natural thing to do. Things were a bit different with Cali. We happen to share a lot of ideas about the world we're living in right now, about how we feel France should evolve and we're committed to a lot of the same causes, too. Cali's a lot more wild and passionate than I am, I'm a much calmer kind of person. What happened was we both met each other halfway and we teamed up on Sans la nommer, a song that suits us both down to the ground. As for Stacey Kent, she's an American singer who's completely mad about Brazilian music. And it just so happened that I'd just finished writing a French adaptation of a Chico Buarque song. The opportunity was just too good to miss! It's a song about a break-up and I think our duet makes it a bit gentler, a bit more human, a bit more serene.

And what about China Forbes who you recorded two reworkings of your old songs with: Ma Solitude and Donne du Rhum à ton Homme…
China's the lead singer of Pink Martini who, like everyone else, I discovered thanks to their hit Je ne veux pas travailler. It just so happens that Ma Solitude is her mother's favourite song. And what wouldn't we do to please our mothers? Donne du rhum à ton homme is a song I wrote before Ma Solitude, but I'd never actually recorded it in the studio before now.

Your new album was produced by Vincent Segal (the cellist half of Bumcello). He's very much in demand as a producer right now. Why did you want to work with him and what did he bring to the project?
Well, I was looking around for an arranger. I'd worked with Hubert Rostaing for ages - he's become a sort of elder brother to me over the years - and I was trying to find someone who could give me the same lightness of touch in the work and the same fluidity and flexibility in the working partnership. Vincent and I have known each other for two years now. He's a neighbour and a friend of mine. We're very close to one another both artistically and geographically speaking. So the whole process was very simple and straightforward really. We'd work at his place a bit and then at mine. We're very complementary. I started out by putting certain elements I really liked on basic demo tapes and then Vincent honed them into shape, without ever moving away too radically from what I'd given him. He managed to keep the initial structure of the songs, but give them an extra dimension. Everyone really appreciated his work on the album. But I have to say, it was a bit of a risk to take, mixing work and friendship!

The musicians featured on your new album seem to be the musicians you're working with on stage at the moment…
Yes, they are. That was another idea Vincent came up with. Instead of recruiting a bunch of studio musicians, he said he preferred to work with the team that usually accompanies me live on stage (Toninho Do Carmo on guitar, Luiz Augusto Cavani on drums and Francis Jauvain on accordion). He thought that would guarantee a certain homogeneity and make the overall sound more coherent. A few other musicians also joined us in the studio including the accordionist Marcel Azzola, the trumpet-player Ibrahim Maalouf, the flautist Malik Mezzadri (aka Magic Malik) and the double-bass player Sarah Murcia. All the important decisions on Solitaire were made in a collective spirit, in a completely informal way. And when you listen to the album I think that's the overriding impression you get.

Who provided the female vocals that accompany you on La Jeune Fille?
That's Sarah Murcia. We forgot to credit her on the CD booklet - but we'll be rectifying that omission on the next edition!

Le temps des Guitares, the opening salvo on Solitaire, is a wonderfully nostalgic track. In fact, there seems to be a hint of nostalgia running throughout the entire album. Is this a reflection of your current frame of mind?
For me, nostalgia means love of the past. It's not a serious illness or anything. The past is something I talk about in the present - with a smile!

Your new album includes a reworking of Sans la nommer and a new song entitled Mélanie faisait l’amour. How do you feel about the 40th anniversary of May 68?
I guess you could say May 68 came to me really, because it was like a confirmation of what I was already living out at the time, basically a mix of libertarian and libertine ideals. Forty years on, I naturally look back on those days with great fondness - great fondness and slight irritation that people like Cohn-Bendit have milked May 68 to death ever since. Personally, I'd just like to preserve the purity of that moment.

Your new album is dedicated to Henri Salvador*…
I knew Henri for 54 years and we were planning to do an album together. But then he suddenly left us without any warning!