Worldly, multilingual Jessica Fichot visits newly redone Blue Fin stage.

What’s exotic is truly in the eye of the beholder, though in the case of the chanteuse Jessica Fichot, the ear is the organ in question.

As a young musician performing around the cafes, clubs and street corners of Paris, the teenage vocalist only wanted to sing in English. The daughter of a French father and a Chinese mother who gave birth to her while studying at MIT, Fichot grew up in France speaking fluent English.

It wasn’t until years later, after settling in Los Angeles, that she rediscovered French as a language for self-expression. She hasn’t banished English from her songwriting vocabulary, but has built a gorgeous globe-spanning repertoire that also encompasses Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Mandarin and French.

“When I first started performing with a vocal cover group in Paris, I was one of the only people who could speak English with no accent, and it seemed quite exotic,” says Fichot, who brings her blazing Gypsy jazz-inflected cabaret combo to the Blue Fin on Sunday on a double bill with local singer/songwriter Lauren Shera. “In Los Angeles, I discovered music I had ignored in childhood.”

Accompanying herself on gleaming red button accordion and toy piano, Fichot delivers her cosmopolitan songs in a soft, crystalline voice. Her sound is cosmic cabaret, a delicious blend of acoustic styles delivered with syncopated verve by her quartet featuring reed player Robby Marshall, bassist Michael Papillo, and Doug Martin, an expert Gypsy jazz guitarist who’s also fluent in Mandarin.

Fichot first came to the U.S. to study songwriting at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. She suddenly found that her ambition to be like Tori Amos, while terribly distinctive in Paris, was shared by many classmates. So much for exoticism. She put her degree to work writing songs for children’s ESL educational programs, and discovered her adult musical identity amidst L.A.’s diverse Latin American musical community.

“I had almost a magical moment listening to Lhasa,” Fichot says, referring to the Mexican-American singer-songwriter. “I heard her song ‘Con Todo Palabra’ out of the blue, a beautiful melody that sounds kind of old but also modern. I wanted to do something like this, like Lila Downs, but in French. Lhasa made me start listening to all the classic French singers I heard growing up – Serge Gainsborough, Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel – but never paid attention to.”

JESSICA FICHOT plays 8pm Sunday, Aug. 23, at Blue Fin Café & Billiards, 685 Cannery Row, Monterey. $7. 717-4280, www.http://bluefinbilliards.com.