★★★★½ Ceberano’s evolving cabaret transcends both old and new.

Spiegeltent, Adelaide Fringe Festival
March 5, 2016

The bitter irony of being an ‘eighties icon’ pop princess approaching your 50th birthday is not lost on Kate Ceberano. Burdened with a canon of national hits including songs about bedroom eyes and pashing, how does one reinvent oneself or adapt as an artist to perform that material as a middle-aged diva? The answer is that a musician, whether a princess or cougar in waiting, is still a musician. In her salad days, Ceberano moved effortlessly between the pop and jazz genres and what she showed in her concert in a sweltering Spiegeltent surrounded by petrolheads is the ability to give those hits a Lazarus-like defibrillation by modifying them into jazz or even reggae clones.

Still foxy in her Jean-Paul Gautier outfit, Ceberano opened on piano with only guitarist James Ryan accompanying her, but it didn’t take me long to recognise her paired back balladic modification of one of her biggest hits, Brave. With her regular band away touring with Belinda Carlisle, Ceberano restocked wisely and generously with two Triple J unearthed talents Alison Ainsworth on guitar and vocals and Jess Fairlie on vocals....