Liza Lim 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 flutist Claire Chase; the orchestral cycle, Annunciation Triptych: Sappho, Mary, Fatimah (2019-22), and Multispecies Knots of Ethical Time (2023) for gestural performer, film and ensemble. She is interested in the plural creativities of collaborating with the âmore-than-humanâ and in speculative questions around the sentiency of things including time, notation and of music itself. Her large-scale cycle Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus (2018) has found especially wide resonance internationally and highlights ecological listening to more-than-human realms.
Liza Lim has received commissions from some of the worldâs pre-eminent orchestras and ensembles including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Concertgebouw Orkest, BBC, BBC Scottish, SWR and WDR Symphony Orchestras, Sydney and Melbourne 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 Berliner Festspiele, Spoleto Festival, Miller Theatre New York, Festival dâAutomne Ă Paris, Venice Biennale, Lucerne Festival, and at all the major Australian festivals. She was named âComposer of the Yearâ in the 2024 OPUS KLASSIK (Germany) and awarded the 13th Roche Commission to compose for the 2026 Lucerne Festival (Switzerland). Prizes recognising her wide-ranging career and vitality of compositional practice include the Australia Councilâs Don Banks Award (2018), the âHappy New Ears Prizeâ of the Hans and Gertrud Zender Foundation (2021) and the 2022 APRA AMCOS National Luminary Award. She was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the 2023 Kingâs Birthday honours for her contribution to Australian music. She was DAAD Artist-in-Berlin in 2007-08 and Composer-in-Residence at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in 2021-22. A founding member of the Academy of the Arts of the World in Cologne (2012-2016), she was also elected a member of the Akademie der KĂźnste Berlin in 2022.
Liza Lim is Professor of Composition and holds the Sculthorpe Chair of Australian Music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She is the first musician to be awarded an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship (2025-29) to lead a five-year program designed to encourage engagement with urgent climate and social issues through music. Her initiatives with the Sydney Conâs âComposing Womenâ gender equity program have had far-reaching impact on commissioning, performance, and next generation leadership in Australian music. The program and her leadership were recognised with the 2020 ClassicalNEXT Award, Rotterdam. She is visiting Endowed Guest Professor at the Frankfurt HfMDK for 3 periods in 2024-25. She has led composition masterclasses and summer courses all over the world, eg: Darmstadt, Royaumont, Shanghai, Boston, Viitasaari, Dublin, Banff, and given conference keynotes and distinguished guest lectures at Kunstuniversität Graz, Oxford, Harvard, UCSD and the University of Sydney amongst others. She established the HCR CD label (now part of NMC Records), Divergence Press and CeReNeM Journal 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 chamber and orchestral works, to five strikingly different operas. Her catalogue of compositions has been published by Casa Ricordi (Milan, London, Berlin) since 1992. British writer Tim Rutherford-Johnsonâs comprehensive book The Music of Liza Lim was published in 2022 by Wildbird Music, Sydney. Her discography extends to 40 CDs including 10 portrait albums released on KAIROS, WERGO, New Focus Recordings, HCR/NMC and HartArt. Album releases and premieres of her work have consistently appeared on The New Yorkerâs annual Notable Performances and Recordings of the Year lists 2013-2021 & 2023.
Liza Lim studied at the Victorian College of the Arts (BA, music), University of Melbourne (MMus) and the University of Queensland (PhD). She undertook postgraduate composition studies with Ton de Leeuw at the Sweelinck Conservatorium Amsterdam in 1987. Other composition teachers and academic mentors include Dr Rosalind McMillan AM, Dr Richard David Hames, Riccardo Formosa, Prof. Philip BraÄanin, Prof. Brian Ferneyhough, Prof. Malcolm Gilles AM, and Prof. Eric Clarke amongst others.