Grawemeyer award
I had a truly lovely day today, taking in the news that I’ve won the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, for my cello concerto A Sutured World. It’s an incredible honour, and I’m grateful for the coverage from outlets like The Violin Channel, Limelight, and the University of Sydney. First thing this morning, I spoke ...
String Creatures, NMC CD
Hot on the heels of the BR-Klassik CD, NMC Recordings have released a wonderful album collecting together some of my key pieces for string quartet and solo low strings. These recordings celebrate my close collaboration with the JACK Quartet who bring a stunningly organic aliveness to performances of String Creatures (2022), The Weaver’s Knot (2014) ...
Orchestral works CD, BR-Klassik #47
I’m intensely grateful to all at Musica Viva Munich: Winrich Hopp, Pia Steigerwald ❤️, Giovanni Michelini; to photographer Astrid Ackermann; all at BR-Klassik including Thomas Becker; recording producers: Jörg Moser, Clemens Deller, Wolfgang Schreiner; sound engineers Christiane Voitz, Winfried Messmer, Peter Urban, and to Christoph Stickel, legendary mastering engineer who brought it all together; most ...
futurist para
I wrote a little futurist para for Limelight Magazine’s 250th Anniversary issue where they asked a number of musicians to speculate on where ‘art music’ might be in 2050. You can see the various responses at https://limelight-arts.com.au/features/limelight-looking-forward-to-2050-fingers-crossed/ my screed below as a screenshot.
solo string music on recent CDs
I’ve had the privilege of working with many superb string players with whom I’ve developed my ear for the qualities and capacities of string as a deeply magical substance. Here are 3 recent solo CD releases from the awesome Karin Hellqvist (LAWO), Louise McMonagle (Delphian) and Sarah Saviet (Coviello). Karin Hellqvist plays One and the ...
Interview w/ Nicolas Altstaedt
David Niemann at Ricordi Berlin did an interview with cellist Nicolas Altstaedt for the Ricordi newsletter and I thought it would be nice to add some extra comments to that: Interview: Nicolas Altstaedt on Lim’s A Sutured World Posted by Ricordi 11 December 2024 In Autumn 2024, Nicolas Altstaedt presented the world premiere of Liza Lim’s A Sutured ...
Composer-in-Residence, Casa da Música 2025
I’m thrilled to be invited as Composer-in-Residence at Casa da Música in Porto, Portugal during 2025. Located in the famous futuristic concert hall designed by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, the Casa opened in 2005, so this is its 20th anniversary. The centre hosts its own symphonic orchestra, large contemporary music ensemble (Ensemble Remix), Baroque orchestra, ...
Amsterdam, then Melbourne: A Sutured World
this was a sumptuous banquet… to work again with ‘cellist Nicolas Altstaedt hot on the heels of the Munich premiere of A Sutured World, this time in 3 concerts with the legendary Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Matthias Pintscher. The RCO together with the Cello Biënnale Amsterdam were co-commissioners of the cello concerto and my ...
Munich premiere, A Sutured World
The broadcast recording of A Sutured World, for solo cello and orchestra, is online until 24 Nov. The work was premiered as part of the Musica Viva series in Munich on 25 Oct 2024 by the fabulous ‘cellist Nicolas Altstaedt with the incredible Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ed Gardner. Check out the link ...
Experiments with formats
A Musical Bestiary (article) I’m very pleased that an article I co-authored with eco-musicologist Joseph Browning has finally seen the light of day! The article experiments with a 2-column layout in the style of a mediaeval bestiary comprising a strange kind of encyclopaedia of musical ‘creatures’ complete with illustrations, and an adjacent commentary. Begun in ...
Joséphine Markovits, in memoriam
This is how I remember her: laughing freely and delighting in the vibrant deep-orange landscape the colour of her hair. In 2008 I travelled together with Joséphine Markovits and a few friends of mine to Kooljaman, an Aboriginal-owned and -run wilderness camp at Cape Leveque, on the extraordinarily beautiful Dampier Peninsula in Bardi Jawi Country, ...
A Sutured World, ‘cello concerto
I’ve spent the last months painstakingly and sometimes painfully writing a ‘cello concerto. The ‘cello is an instrument I think I know pretty well, having written several solo pieces for it as well as featuring it in numerous larger works. But so many times in composing this piece I had the sensation of scrabbling around, ...
An Australian Season…2024
The first part of 2024 sees quite a range of my music being played in the towns where I live and work (!) Wonderful musicians from near and far will present both world and Australian premieres across the country. James Morley kicks off this ‘Australian season’ on 13 February 2024 with a performance of an ...
Tailor of Time, EIC documentary film
The Ensemble Intercontemporain with film maker Jérémie Schellaert and interviewer Luc Hossepied created a beautiful short documentary about The Tailor of Time. The film includes footage from the premiere of the work at Strasbourg Musica Festival (Sept 2023) with the EIC conducted by Pierre Bleuse and from the second performance a few weeks later at ...
Multispecies Knots of Ethical Time—who are we and who else is here?
This is Part 2 of the ARTikulationen keynote talk given at Künstuniversität Graz entitled ‘Who are we and who else is here (Multispecies Knots of Ethical Time)‘ (see previous post for Part 1). This continues my speculations on the sentiency, the vitality of the more-than-human in a partnership with musical energies. Multispecies Knots of Ethical ...
The Tailor of Time (2023): time paradoxes and the sentiency of notation
I recently gave a keynote address for the ARTikulationen conference ‘Researching Across’ at Kunstuniversität in Graz and discussed two recent works: The Tailor of Time (2023) and Multispecies Knots of Ethical Time (2023). My talk focussed on some ideas or ‘thought experiments’ around multiplicity; on some perspectives, perceptions and experiences which resist notions of the ...
Orchestral opulence: Annunciation Triptych
Reviews of Annunciation Triptych CD (WDR Sinfonie Orchester, conductor Cristian Măcelaru, soprano Emily Hindrichs) & of the concert with Mary/ Transcendence after Trauma by Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (Musica Viva Munich, 12 May, 2023). #update 10 June, a few more CD reviews (in English) extracts from some of the longer CD reviews (in translation via ...
Album release: Annunciation Triptych
I’m thrilled to have a new CD out on the KAIROS label [they previously published my work Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus in 2020]. Annunciation Triptych is a 45-minute orchestral 3-part cycle (the last work includes soprano and adlib parts for singing audience) that celebrates three iconic female spiritual figures: The Ancient Greek poet Sappho, ...
2023, misc.
Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus Who would have thunk it? My work Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus (2018) has been taken up by new music ensembles and orchestras all over the place, with 9 performances last year from Aldeburgh to Berlin to New York. Ensemble Cepromusic in Mexico played it 3 times including it in ...
Memorabilia
Composing the last part of Machine for Contacting the dead for the Ensemble Intercontemporain. Apartment in Rue du Temple in the Marais, Paris 1999. (photo: Daryl Buckley) Here are some rambling thoughts which I’ll keep trying to develop on this blog…this is not always articulate and for sure, not comprehensive, and I’d be interested to ...
Liza Lim 