Kate Ceberano

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Kate Ceberano. I’m lucky to say we have a very long standing friendship dating back to the 1980s.

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I knew Kate when she was in her band I'm Talking. But the word was out that she was a really good jazz singer. I knew that because she, you know, had started with this group, the Hoagie Cats. 

I was writing the music for a film called Georgia, directed by Ben Lewin and starring Judy Davis. I wrote these couple of songs for the film and asked Kate to sing them. She blew me away. These weren't easy songs to sing. I was just stunned. And I said, ‘this is really the sort of music you should be singing. Forget the rest of it’. 

 

She's one of these people who can do many things. She's sort of multi-talented and she’s finally being recognised more for her artwork. She paints, she writes, she quilts. She's a person who's just super capable. 

 

In the late nineties we did a show together at the Continental and really enjoyed it. Because of the sort of friendship we have, it makes working together very easy. It seemed like a no-brainer to me when I was curating the series at Ukaria to invite Kate to join me. Once we re-united musically it made complete sense to record together. 

 

Kate is a natural jazz singer. I think she gets a lot out of working with me because I push her a bit. She loves the freedom of working in the duo context, as do I. She's a beautiful person to collaborate with. She's a lot of fun, she loves music and she knows a lot about it. She's always loved jazz. It was a thrill for us to win the ARIA for our collaborative album Tryst.