Kate Ceberano is a creative soul, and a restless one at that.
Being confined to her home during the long lockdown months in Melbourne wasn't easy for a woman accustomed to life on the road. To make matters worse, she had just recorded album My Life is a Symphony with conductor George Ellis and couldn't release it or tour it.
"It felt like every obstacle was punching this project in the face," she says.
"I consider it an oddness, I really do, but I have a definite reaction to being held down.
"I was struggling for air during COVID. I started asking myself 'Right, what haven't you done yet? What would you do if you had a chance to do it again?'
"I had a great deal of time on my hands to work out what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it."
A determined Ceberano hit the ground running when lockdown restrictions ended.
"What it all boils down to is that one foot in front of the other gets you where you want to go. I busted out of the gates and started walking. So far I have done about 100 dates at clubs and pubs to get my gig fitness back."
Ceberano is excited to be bringing her full band and the George Ellis Orchestra to Newcastle's Civic Theatre for the opening night of New Annual Festival on September 22.
"I feel like I'm a good fit for New Annual. At least I hope I am! I feel like my life is an art form," she says.
"And the Civic is very me. I get goosebumps thinking about delivering this type of material there.
"Newcastle are a great audience, always very lusty and loud, and I love it."
My Life is a Symphony is a celebration of Ceberano's four-decade career, from her own pop hits Brave and Pash to the songs she has interpreted along the way, such as I Don't Know How to Love Him and Mirror Ball.
"Choosing songs for the album was actually easy for me," she says.
"I picked them on the basis that they were kind of neglected and they were important to me. They were songs I had written with the purpose of having them heard but they had been submerged within an album."
She cites as an example Earth & Sky, a song she'd written for "an album that got shelved" and resurrected for My Life is a Symphony.
"I'm going to the Big Red Bash this week and when I was last there I stood in the middle of the desert and I did this big 360-turn and thought 'pure earth and the sky, this is Australia. We are the product of this space and its limitless aspects'.
"The geographical part of being Australian means we are freer than most, I think, and I reckon that's worthy of singing about with an orchestra."
COVID lockdown also prompted her to write a book. It's called Unsung: A Compendium of Creativity and it's due for release in October.
"I thought 'don't be fearful Kate, use your mouth, use your thoughts, use your images and memories, and open it all up'. This is what we do as creatives, we lay ourselves on the line, we put everything out there for people to view and pick at," she says.
Ceberano has spent most of her life in the public eye and has consistently refused to be pigeon-holed as an artist. She made her performing debut as a teen in Melbourne, starting out with jazz ensemble the Hoagy Cats and pop band Expozay.
Her backing vocals on the Models' 1985 hit Out Of Mind, Out of Sight attracted attention, and the following year her band I'm Talking was named the ARIA Breakthrough Act of 1986.
Her early '90s jazz crossover album Kate Ceberano and Her Septet went platinum in 1987, she won the ARIA Award for Best Female Artist in 1988, and she released her debut pop solo album Brave in 1989. It went triple platinum and the song Bedroom Eyes was the highest selling Australian single of the year.
Jazz album Like Now followed and, in 1990, four MO Awards and two ARIAs for Ceberano who also famously starred as Mary Magdalene opposite John Farnham in Jesus Christ Superstar in 1992.
Television roles and more albums, spanning a diverse range of genres, followed and in 2014 she became the first woman inducted into the Australian Songwriters Association Hall of Fame (2014).
In 2016 she received an Order of Australia.
"Performing has always been a private conversation between me and tens of thousands of people," Ceberano says.
"I am unfinished business. I feel like an unfinished symphony as a person.
"I'm not saying that to be self-aggrandising, I just feel that an artist gets so quickly locked into a box, and the shadows they build around themselves electrify them every time they step out of their lane.
"And what I'm trying to say is I want to be free. I think that's what resonates with people when they watch or listen to me.
"I've been criticised for escaping pretty much all of my life, but this has made me more dedicated to prove that there's much to learn if you keep yourself open to learning and creating.
"Why should that stop?
"It should be an endless occupation and then you die."
Kate Ceberano's My Life is a Symphony, Civic Theatre, September 22 at 7.30pm. Tickets are on sale now.
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