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 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. Her composition Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus (2018) has found especially wide resonance internationally being performed by groups from Melbourne to Berlin, New York to Helsinki to Mexico.
She is the first musician to be awarded an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship which will see her lead a five-year program designed to encourage engagement with urgent climate and social issues through music. Widely commissioned by some of the world’s pre-eminent orchestras and ensembles, Lim is Professor of Composition and Sculthorpe Chair of Australian Music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the 2023 King’s Birthday honours for her contribution to Australian music. Her music has been published by Ricordi Berlin since 1992 and is released on 40 CDs including 10 portrait albums with Kairos, HCR_NMC, WERGO, Hat Hut, ABC-Classics, receiving reviews such as ‘I can’t think of many other composers today who, on a grand scale, combine her mastery of colour and form with sensitive engagement to where we’re at ecologically.’ Gramophone, 2023
Liza Lim lives in Naarm (Melbourne).
