In 2025, Kate celebrates 40 years on the road with The Australian Made Tour: a simultaneous act of grateful reflection and bold creative evolution weaving her own platinum musical legacy into the vast tapestry of Australian music.

Spanning I’m Talking to Pash, Brave and Bedroom Eyes via classic cuts from Divinyls, INXS, Models, Renee Geyer, John Farnham, Split Enz, The Church, Sia, Silverchair, Icehouse, Paul Kelly and more, The Australian Made Tour is a heartfelt tribute to the songs and artists that have helped shape and inspire her extraordinary career.

The project continues a relentless escalation of Kate’s journey. In 2023 the universally revered, lavishly decorated Melbourne artist marked her ruby anniversary with an ARIA-nominated 30th album, My Life Is A Symphony: an orchestral tour de force with her songs up front and her voice in peak command.

My Life Is A Symphony was also a sold-out national theatre event, preceding yet another capacity tour in 2024: Superstars Live with Kate and her JC Superstar comrade Jon Stevens had fans in rapture and critics reaching for new superlatives.

Now recognised among the true legends of Australian music far beyond the whims of fashion, Kate’s standing as live performer reflects an assured rise to the pinnacles of rock, pop, soul and jazz. Her 11 platinum albums, 10 Top 10 singles and countless awards speak for themselves. But it's over 6000 performances on every concert, theatre and festival stage in the country and beyond that her distinction was forged.

For those who came in late — with her record-breaking run with John Farnham in Jesus Christ Superstar circa ’92, perhaps; or her own hit TV show of the mid ‘90s; her 2014 induction into the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame; or her Top 5 album of 2021, Sweet Inspiration — Kate was a force of nature from day one.

As a teen, she declined advances from UK pop stable Stock Aitken Waterman to cut her teeth in the rough and tumble of Melbourne's live scene. Her jazz ensemble the Hoagy Cats opened for local legend Vince Jones at the Arts Centre. Her pop outfit Expozay — “Saturday Night Fever meets the Breakfast Club,” she recalls — tore up the sticky carpet of the Chevron with Divinyls. Her wide embrace of multiple musical genres continues to this day.

First contact for many was Kate's magnetic cameo as a scene-stealing backing singer on the Models #1 smash Out Of Mind, Out of Sight circa 1985. By that time, she was already singing for ARIA’s Breakthrough Act of ‘86, I'm Talking, the band that “pioneered New York style art-pop during the Jurassic period of pub rock”.

I'm Talking’s platinum debut, Bear Witness, brought Kate's jaw-dropping voice and irrepressible charisma to national attention via their three top 10 singles Trust Me, Do You Want To Be? and Holy Word. It led to stages as historic as Live Aid and Australian Made alongside INXS, Jimmy Barnes, Divinyls and the Saints. Today it’s enshrined among Rolling Stone's Top 200 Australian Albums of all time.

I'm Talking took Kate on the road, including her first 36-date tour of the UK. Her showstopping cover of Rose Royce’s Love Don't Live Here Anymore was early warning of another string to her bow: an interpreter of exceptional taste and skill.

“I'm Talking inspired a generation of electronic artists and DJs who would make their mark in the ‘90s and beyond,” wrote the authors of The 100 Best Australian Albums in 2010. Meanwhile, Kate’s first Countdown Award for Most Popular Female Performer foreshadowed her inevitable shift to the centre spotlight.

Her first move was prescient. Recorded live, Kate Ceberano and Her Septet presaged the cool jazz crossover of the ‘90s to sell platinum in ‘87. You’ve Always Got the Blues, made with Wendy Matthews for the ABC series Stringer, marked Kate’s third platinum award and first ARIA (from 9 nominations) for Best Female Artist.

Brave was a landmark solo pop debut, a skilled consolidation of her journey through dance, pop and soul, which sold triple platinum to become one of THE smash albums of ‘89. Bedroom Eyes was the year’s highest selling Australian single, one of four including Kate’s first charting single as a songwriter, That’s What I Call Love.

As if to reassert her mercurial nature, she followed Brave with a second jazz album, Like Now. In 1990, four MO Awards and two ARIAs — her second for Best Female Artist — sealed her status as a true cross-genre sensation. From Sanctuary Cove with Frank Sinatra, Whitney Houston and Peter Allen to the World Music Awards in Monaco with Prince, Sting and Grace Jones, the world would become her stage.