As an Amazon affiliate partner, Albumism earns commissions from qualifying purchases.
Kate Ceberano
My Life Is A Symphony
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Listen Below
Kate Ceberano is one of Australia’s most important voices. With forty years in the music industry, celebrating Ceberano seems not just like an achievement well deserved and earned for the multiple Aria Award winner, but also a time to reflect upon a canon of work that has stood the test of time and been the soundtrack to so many. To refer to Ceberano as a legend is both a cliché and a vital acknowledgement that doesn’t even begin to do her justice.
Back in early 2021, Ceberano released her eighteenth studio album Sweet Inspiration. No mean feat for even the most successful and seasoned of performers, but throw in a global pandemic and some of the harshest lockdown laws imposed in Ceberano’s hometown of Melbourne and one could have easily been forgiven for taking the easy option: to just stop. She didn’t.
Like much of Ceberano’s career, the dedication to not giving up has been at the forefront of everything she has set her mind to. When there wasn’t a space for her, she made space, her own space and invited everyone to join her. The pandemic was living proof of this. With intermittent and sparse live shows to accompany Sweet Inspiration’s release, every show sold out. And when everything came to a screeching and abrupt halt, Ceberano continued making art, just differently, painting namely. The tenacity and quiet strength that has guided Ceberano for so long are the very things that have allowed her career to not just survive for forty years, but to thrive.
Paying homage to this longevity, Ceberano has returned with her thirtieth album overall, My Life Is A Symphony. With ten carefully selected songs that have been curated from across five of Ceberano’s albums (Brave, Pash, The Girl Can Help It, Dallas et Kate and Kensal Road), these songs have been reimagined and given an orchestral sound courtesy of the world-renowned Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
Opening with the anthemic “Brave” and perhaps what has now become a heavily associated theme for Ceberano over her career, the reworking of this classic is exquisite and showcases the profound aspects of the song’s lyrical value, complemented in only a way an orchestra could provide. “Brave” has meant so much to so many and personally, it has been a song that has provided an immense amount of comfort and safety in ways I could have never fathomed. The accompanying video, released on the same day as the album, sees Ceberano in a sea of darkness coupled with largescale moving imagery, providing a stunning visual backdrop to her illustrious career. Reminiscence most definitely has a way of stirring up emotions, something this video manages to capture.
Listen to the Album:
“Earth & Sky” from Ceberano’s 2009 album Dallas et Kate made in conjunction with fellow Melbournian musician Dallas Cosmas follows. Yet again, it is a celebration of the singer’s lyrical flair enabling her voice to shine in one of the album’s most powerful moments. Much like the album’s fifth track “Courage,” included on both the Dallas et Kate and Pash albums, there is a freedom and innocence to both songs that manages to translate so beautifully with their new orchestral sounds.
An advantage to reworking songs in an unhurried style, like that of many an orchestral piece, is the ability for the words to be truly heard. The words take center stage and the orchestra, in all its grandeur and raw audible beauty, combine to create something truly magnificent. This is again evident on both “Time to Think” and “Pash.”
Ceberano draws on a pair of songs from the 2013 album Kensal Road, which was one of Ceberano’s most significant albums with her return to new and original material in over a decade. The beautiful coming of age “Louis’ Song” and “Champion,” a song about reminding yourself of the greatness that can all too often get lost over time, are interpreted to perfection and remind the listener of how carefully each song has been selected and then curated into something as spectacular as this album is.
The remaining songs on the album, the heart-wrenching “Sympathy” from Pash along with “Sunburn” and “Cherry Blossom Lipstick,” both from 2003’s The Girl Can Help It album, round out the ten tracks chosen for My Life Is A Symphony. Relistening to the two latter songs, some twenty years later and now reimagined, it’s impossible to not see how a then-pregnant Ceberano must have been contemplating the impending changes that parenthood would bring. Maybe it’s the songs’ new sounds that allow them to truly embody their almost carefree and earthy tones which have now become pivotal to their essence. My Life Is A Symphony captures the beauty of reimagining work perfectly.
Accompanied by Ceberano’s vocals and the orchestra’s artistry, the achingly beautiful and melodious My Life Is A Symphony is nothing short of euphonious.
Notable Tracks: “Brave” | “Earth & Sky” | “Sympathy”
As an Amazon affiliate partner, Albumism earns commissions from qualifying purchases.
LISTEN: