Music legend Robyn Archer is returning to Canberra, 10 years on from Skywhale

The cabaret star first performed in Canberra in 1978 at the Canberra Theatre, sparking four decades of mutual regard that culminates next month with a new show at the same - but much-changed - venue.

She'll be best known, especially to long-time Canberrans, as the figure who steered the ship of the city's centenary celebrations 10 years ago as artistic director - a gig that saw her set up camp here for nearly five years.

"I think I was able to let more ideas fly in that festival, that celebration, than any other festivals that I've been in," she said.

"There were so many great things that came to pass and the Skywhale was sort of the most obvious."

The skyborne artwork that has become such a byword for Canberra - for reasons well beyond its multi-breasted silhouette - has also taken its place in Archer's own landscape of successes.

Reflecting on the "brain fart" that would become a sculpture she commissioned from artist Patricia Piccinini, that caused a storm of controversy when first unveiled, she said its genesis and journey summed up her own experience of Canberra.

"It's a great story, actually," she said.

"The fact that it's just sort of gone on to wow audiences throughout the world, actually, and Australia, and now been purchased by the National Gallery.

"You sometimes get that satisfaction out of the commissioning process, but that one was really just a little brain fart that I had, about who on earth would be interested in making a big balloon.

"It's deep satisfaction when something lasts."

She said the centenary program had a lasting legacy she could still see today, including the annual Design Canberra Festival, and a solid sense of pride in the capital that had grown in force as the years went by.

"I had the best time in the world. I loved it," she said.

"I think I've kept track enough with enough people, for them to think that it really had an effect. It's sort of lifted pride in the city and lifted the cultural aspects in particular. So that's, again, very satisfying, but at the time, it was just enormous fun."

Now 74, and retired from festival directing for the time being, she's bringing her own Australian songbook - a continuation of her series including American, French and German songs - to the Canberra stage.

This one, she said, was a lockdown labour of love that forced her to reimagine the Australian music landscape to fit into her personal artistic journey.

From convict lament to Bon Scott, Kate Miller Heidke and First Nations songwriters, it's a winding and unpredictable journey, with not a Waltzing Matilda nor Great Southern Land in sight.

"My own taste is extremely eclectic - I've never kind of gotten rid of anything that I've ever loved," she said.

"So it's country music, and it's pop and rock and opera and art song, and hard and simple and funny and rude. It is a combination of all things and I guess like anybody's songbook, particularly a singer's songbook, it sort of reflects my taste in many ways.

"I don't quite know how it happens, that they end up being quite a succinct journey. I think the audience has always felt like they've got to the end of it, and boy, we went somewhere with that."

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She's also taken up the inherent invitation to explore First Nations - "The only true Australian songbook would have to include First Nations writing, but it would fill 100 songbooks at the moment".

And as she prepares to turn 75 next month, during the show's run, she'll be using this music to reflecting on own her age.

"I have to say that I will make the point in this concert, to ask the question, why is it that the late Archie Roach and the late Ruby Hunter are not on stage singing their songs at this time? They were both younger than me. And why are they not there?" she said.

"It's because of this terrible gap, that we have all failed to close, in health and life expectancy, as well as many, many other things. And that very, very soon, we get the opportunity to possibly do something about enhancing the chances of closing the gap."

Meanwhile, she says, her legendary voice is in good nick, due partly to the 20-year period she was best known as a festival director, rather than performer.

"Opera singers often say that there are only so many notes in a lifetime," she said.

"If that's the case, maybe that 20 years of festival direction where I was only doing one or two concerts a year, maybe that preserved the number of nights that I've got left."