The multi-ARIA-award-winning singer has just released The Dangerous Age, a collaborative studio album with Steve Kilbey (The Church) and songwriter Sean Sennett, to critical acclaim and she is on an all-time creative high.

"The album is just gorgeous," she excitedly tells Weekender from Melbourne.

"I'm definitely at a very comfortable age in terms of creativity. A creative age. I'm humming along really well and I feel like I will just have to name my next album 'Genre Fluid', because I've become the queen of genre fluid. I think it is something that was always inevitable with me anyway."

Ceberano has been in the business for more than 35 years, writing and performing both jazz and pop music, and has seven platinum and seven gold albums to her name.

She burst onto the scene in the mid-'80s as a 15-year-old fronting successful pop-funk band I'm Talking. After launching her solo career, she took out Best Female Artist at the 1988 and '89 ARIA awards with her triple-platinum album Brave, and in 1992 she starred in the chart-topping Jesus Christ Superstar.

Ceberano now has 27 albums to her name and in 2014 became the first woman to be inducted into the Australian Songwriters' Association (ASA) Hall of Fame. In 2016 she was made a member of the Order of Australia for "significant service to the performing arts and charitable organisations" and last year she recorded Tryst with Paul Grabowsky which won an ARIA for Best Jazz Album.

In The Dangerous Age, shades of light and dark are at play with Ceberano and Kilbey's contrasting vocals as well as their distinct musical styles. Kilbey's lyrics were sent to Ceberano who put them to music and emailed them back. Neither artist knew who they were working with at the time.

It was a different process from what Ceberano was used to and she relished the creative freedom.

"When an artist is running a bit more independently, and maybe self governing as well, it means they are really able to be free," she says.

"You can try many different colours, you don't have to stick with one. And this is coming from someone who has always worn black. I wouldn't have been caught dead in all this colour 12 years ago.

"I've changed. I've changed a lot.

"I feel like I've been living to be this age and I never knew it. I was very awkward with fame and the easiness of it as a child. I was always suspicious that someone or something would come and take it away so I was constantly trying to avoid being too famous, you know?

"I'm patroning a lot of other young artists now, too, and it steadies the ship and I do feel better about it all."

Ceberano will be hitting the road with Brian Cadd, Deborah Conway, Joe Camilleri, John Paul Young, Leo Sayer, Vika and Linda Bull and Wendy Matthews in May for the annual APIA Good Times Tour of Australia.

"It is Wendy's first APIA tour and it will also be the first time in 30 years she and I have performed our material from You've Always Got The Blues," Ceberano says.

"That was a platinum-selling record back in the day. For some of the audience that will be quite a joy to hear, and certainly it is a joy for us to sing it. The genders are a bit more evenly balanced on this tour, too, which is a good thing."

As for music - and Ceberano's renewed enthusiasm for writing and singing it - she has this to say.

"In times where there is a great deal of focus and concentrated energy on things that can frighten and alarm you, one of the wonderful things - since the time we were cradled in our parents' arms - is music," she says.

"Even in the recent fire relief concerts, the way the artists got together and produced this sonic Om ... the power of music should never be underestimated.

"I lose myself to music. Movement and stage craft is what has kept me in the game. Once I'm lost, I'm lost. It's very Pavlovian: the music starts and you're in. In a way it's kind of like my church. That's where I go to put in the greatest part of my energy and I invite people in to get lost too, to escape the daily travails.

"I feel a lot braver now. I wish I had been braver as a kid, I would have reached this point a lot sooner. But I'm here now, it's happening, hang on Martha here we go!"

While you're with us, did you know the Newcastle Herald offers breaking news alerts, daily email newsletters and more? Keep up to date with all the local news - sign up here