Lim, Liza

Liza Lim

Biography

Born: 1966

Country: Perth, Australia

Studies:

Teachers:

Website: https://lizalimcomposer.com/

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Liza Lim (b. 1966, Perth, Australia) is a composer, educator and researcher whose music focusses on collaborative and transcultural practices. Beauty, rage & noise, ecological connection, and female spiritual lineages are at the heart of recent works such as Sex Magic (2020) for Claire Chase; the orchestral cycle, Annunciation Triptych: Sappho, Mary, Fatimah (2019-22), and the piano concerto World as Lover, World as Self (2021). Her large-scale cycle Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus (2018) has found especially wide resonance internationally and highlights ecological listening to beyond-the-human realms.

Liza Lim has received commissions from some of the world’s pre-eminent orchestras and ensembles including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, BBC, SWR and WDR Symphony Orchestras, Ensemble Musikfabrik, ELISION, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Ensemble Modern, Klangforum Wien, International Contemporary Ensemble, Arditti String Quartet and the JACK Quartet. She was Resident Composer with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 2005 and 2006. Her music has been featured at the Berlinerfestspiele, Spoleto Festival, Miller Theatre New York, Festival d’Automne à Paris, Venice Biennale, Lucerne Festival, and at all the major Australian festivals. Awards recognising her wide-ranging career and depth of compositional practice include the Australia Council’s Don Banks Award (2018), the ‘Happy New Ears Prize’ of the Hans and Gertrud Zender Foundation (2021) and the 2022 APRA AMCOS National Luminary Award. She was DAAD Artist-in-Berlin in 2007-08 and Composer-in-Residence at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in 2021-22. She was a founding member of the Academy of the Arts of the World in Cologne (2012-2016) and was elected a member of the Akademie der Künste Berlin in 2022.

Liza Lim is currently Professor of Composition and inaugural Sculthorpe Chair of Australian Music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She has given composition masterclasses all over the world and established the HCR CD label and Divergence Press at the University of Huddersfield where she was Director of the Centre for Research in New Music (2008-2017). She has continually reinvented her compositional language and practice across a substantial output that spans intimate and collaborative instrumental solos, to five strikingly different operas, and her catalogue has been published by Casa Ricordi (Milan, London, Berlin) since 1992. Her music appears on 10 monographic CDs and 26 other discs. CD releases and premieres of her work have consistently appeared on The New Yorker’s annual Notable lists 2013-2021. Her recent 3-CD album of operas and vocal works, ‘Singing in Tongues’ (2021) was celebrated in The New York Times ‘5 Classical Music Albums to Hear Right now’.

Works for Percussion

Percussion Solo

An Elemental Thing - Wood Block
Love Letter - Hand Drum

Percussion Ensemble

Anactoria - Percussion Sextet
City of Falling Angels - Percussion 12

With Other Instruments

Chang-O - Percussion and Baritone
Ming Qi (Bright Vessel) - Percussion and Oboe
Shimmer Songs - Percussion Trio and String Quintet
Spirit Weapons - Percussion Trio, Cello, Contrabass Clarinet