KATE CEBERANO

Kate Ceberano has dazzled audiences for nearly 40 years with her show-stopping voice and charismatic stage presence. A true Aussie icon, her latest show Australian Made commemorates her first ever tour experience and pays tribute to the homegrown hits that have shaped her.

Rita Horanyi chatted with the celebrated singer about reaching her creative apex and how she keeps connecting with new audiences.

Your new tour marks nearly 40 years. What a milestone! How does it feel to still be doing what you love?
It’s a privilege. I think being alive is a privilege and there’s not a moment of my life where I waste a moment of it. This tour, we just did the opening weekend, and it’s the most exhilarating thing I’ve done in my whole life ...

There’s no way you can predict if you can last as long as I have, but you can feel secure. It’s not like anyone can un-Kate Ceberano me ... You just go out there with all of the skills that I’ve learnt over 40 years and this amazing team that I’ve got ... It’s freedom from self-criticism ... it’s just exquisite freedom to create.

Tell us a bit more about the inspo behind the Australian Made Tour. 
Being in Victoria under COVID changed my sense of self as a musician, as an artist. It basically assumed for anyone who was at the pointy end of a career that they would be like, “okay, you’ve done a great job, you should be satisfied ... just live and relax and enjoy that you’ve had a wonderful expressive life and creatively you’ve done everything you ever dreamt you would.”

But I just didn’t feel like that.

I felt creatively at an apex in my life ... I’d never been more valuable to society. I’d raised a lot of money in the year before COVID for different things ... And it was then that I started doing a broadcast each week with my husband, who’s a filmmaker, and a girl that was living with us, Kathleen Halloran, who’s a young guitarist, and is also on this tour with me. We were doing fundraising, and we raised money for a lot of our industry that wasn’t able to work during that time ... And then we all came out the other side and ... my husband and I decided, we are not going to not keep playing, so we combined our efforts and that’s when the idea of this gig came along.

We thought, okay, it’s coming up to the 40th anniversary of Australian Made [Ceberano's first touring experience in 1986-1987], and that would be a wonderful way to show Australia how to be very Australian. We’d been told back then that an Australian line-up wouldn’t fill a stadium.

Nothing much has changed! Except that we defied them and said that’s bullsh-t. All the bands at the time had nothing in common musically ... And so, you had INXS and you had Jimmy, and you had The Saints, who were punks, and then you had this pop band, I’m Talking, and you had Mental as Anything, and the list goes on. So, we decided it’s time ... let’s just keep on putting Australia back on the plate.

You’ve had this incredibly multi-faceted career, recorded 30 albums, won countless awards, you’ve written an autobiography and started painting – any particular achievement a highlight for you?
I’m always very committed to the thing I’m in. And I feel like that thing is the sum of the parts that make me, and for that reason I’m always most loyal to the moment I'm at, like now. The moment I'm in now seems to me like the best thing I've ever done in my life. And I think that’s because I keep asking questions and seeking new answers, and I'm seeking new heights as a human. I want more.

There are career highlights obviously and every one of them has their own potency, but again it all just ends up at the same day, and the same day I wake up and ask the question, “what am I going to be today?”

What’s next for you? Any exciting projects in the pipeline?
As you cast out a net and go fishing for certain things, you realize that, maybe for the longest time, the only person who's been limiting the whole process is yourself. I mean, there's a big world out there. I've nothing to fear at this age. I could just cast my net further. Some would say, “Oh, you should be satisfied with what you've done and how you've managed to create a career in a country. It's a privilege, it's amazing.” But maybe in the third quarter, it might be about throwing the net out further. Who knows?

I'm quite happy doing this. I could just do this for the rest of my life as well, but that would be a shame because Australian music needs to be heard in other countries ... Imagine doing this show, as Australians, taking it to a country that’s never heard me or the music and they go “wow, that's really deep”. That would be fun.

It would be fun! And it links back to my final question, what's the best thing about being on tour? 
It takes a lot of courage to get up each and every night and put yourself out there and expose your dreams and hopes to a new public. You have to be able to decide that the outcome of it is not really the object, right? People will love or hate you. Doesn't matter.

But what you do have to do every day is you have to show up and deliver and know that somewhere out there in the audience, it's going to be really good for them, they’ll either have some release or they'll have a moment recalling their life when they were a certain age or at a certain time that felt most vivid.

And I think that when you're going out there each and every day and you're doing that, then it becomes a service for others instead of for yourself, and I think that's a pretty noble thing to do.

Kate Ceberano - Australian Made Tour 2025
WHEN SAT 26 JUL | 7PM
AT DARWIN ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE
COST $65 | $60 MEMB/CONC
INFO yourcentre.com.au

^{Header & inset: Kate Ceberano. Photo: Gladys Smith.}