have notebook & pen – will compose
I started writing this piece, The Green Lion Eats the Sun – for double-bell euphonium, in Boston airport during a 7-hour delay (this is what boredom can do for you…) and finished it a few days later in Manchester, UK. Marco Blaauw from musikFabrik and I had a conversation about recent projects and here’s an ...
‘Gifts and Greetings’, the Arditti String Quartet’s 40th Anniversary
On Saturday 10th May, the premiere of The Weaver’s Knot, a new string quartet of mine commissioned for the concert ‘Gifts and Greetings: Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Arditti String Quartet’ takes place at Wittenertage für neue Kammermusik. As well as my work, the programme sees the premieres of quartets by Mark Andre, Hans Abrahamsen, ...
April is the month for journeying
I’m very excited to be visiting the States to work with ICE, the International Contemporary Ensemble who are presenting a concert of my work at the Miller Theatre in New York on April 10th. I did a skype rehearsal a few days ago with ‘cellist Michael Nicolas who will be performing Invisibility. This is a work ...
vigil music for Reza Barati
Just wanted to add something to the vigils being kept for Reza Barati, the 23-year-old Iranian asylum seeker killed in the Manus Island riot last week. Thank-you Ashot Sarkissjan for the soul-music. Philtre (1997) for solo retuned violin, performed by Ashot on Monday 17 Feb 2014 in St Paul’s Hall in Huddersfield.
‘in raptures the world will writhe before you’
There is no need for you to leave the house. Stay at your table and listen. Don’t even listen, just wait. Don’t even wait, be completely quiet and alone. The world will offer itself to you to be unmasked; it can’t do otherwise; in raptures it will writhe before you. [Franz Kafka, The Blue Octavo ...
CDs come in threes; SWR merger protest & petition
You can wait for years – for CDs, for buses – and suddenly they come in threes… Hot off the presses is Marco Blaauw’s Angels on WERGO which follows the release of Tongue of the Invisible earlier this year on the same label. Both CDs have come in for praise from Alex Ross on his blog and in The New ...
Knot thinking…
Excerpt from conference paper: ‘Knots and other forms of entanglement’ (Lim, 2013) …One could think of this musical language as textilic: a music of intertwining fibres and chaotic entanglements, structures of mesh-work or of threads becoming woven textures. A key aspect of this quality of ‘textility’[1] is the notion of sound rooted in a dynamic ...
An ‘intercultural’ education
I’ll be participating in a forum next week hosted by Cambridge University as part of the activities of the Commonwealth Creativities in Intercultural Arts Network (CIAN). One of the preparatory questions asked by Dr Brydie-Leigh Bartleet, convenor of forum 2, was ‘In your experience what is the single most important thing to take into account ...
Tongue of the Invisible CD released on WERGO
I’m very excited that the Tongue of the Invisible CD is now out on WERGO (WER 68592). This is issued in the Music of Our Time/Edition musikFabrik series and documents a beautiful collaboration between myself, writer Jonathan Holmes, musicians Omar Ebrahim, Uri Caine, Ensemble musikFabrik and conductor André de Ridder. The CD is a live recording ...
The Weaver’s Knot
The Weaver’s Knot (2013), a string quartet based on aspects of hardanger fiddle playing and written for the Arditti String Quartet on the occasion of their 40th anniversary for performances in 2014. The ‘weaver’s knot’ (also known as a ‘sheet bend’ in knot parlance) is a traditional technique used for hundreds of years in textile ...
Lespugue Venus
‘Lespugue Venus’ (26-24,000 years old, carved mammoth ivory) – I was transfixed by this beautiful statuette in the Ice-Age art show at the British Museum. It’s in a cabinet right at the start of the exhibition and it took me ages to tear myself away from its radiant presence. According to Elizabeth Wayland Barber, this ...
Video of ‘The Navigator’ opera online
The full video documentation of my opera The Navigator (2008), libretto by Patricia Sykes, now appears on the Institute of Musical Research (University of London) website as part of their ‘New Music Insight’ series. The video was filmed in the Judith Wright Centre just prior to the premiere in Brisbane in July 2008 with the ...
‘sympathetic error’, fragile architecture
I was commissioned by Ensemble musikFabrik to write solo works for two musicians of the group: Axis Mundi for solo bassoon, for Alban Wesly, and The Green Lion eats the Sun for double-bell euphonium, for Melvyn Poore on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. Both works explore ideas connected to shamanic journeying or alchemical transformation ...
Pearl, Ochre, Hair String
Click for: Video documentary about Pearl, Ochre, Hair String made by Peider Defilla for BR-Alpha. Interview with Liza Lim and excerpts from the premiere performance by the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks conducted by Lothar Zagrosek * * Pearl, Ochre, Hair String (2010) For orchestra Commissioned by the Bavarian Radio Orchestra and West Australian Symphony Orchestra and with the generous financial ...
Axis Mundi (2012-14)
AXIS MUNDI (2012-14) for solo bassoon Commissioned by Ensemble musikFabrik through Kunststiftung NRW. Dedicated to Alban Wesly. **** Images came to me in a dream: I saw a dead tree with dessicated bark and as I watched, the cracks and hollows filled with insects and larvae. Birds began feeding and breeding until the whole tree ...
new day, new opera
And yet, and yet – the last secret of the tree of codes is that nothing can ever reach a definite conclusion. Nowhere as much as there do we feel possibilities, shaken by the nearness of realization. [from Jonathan Safran Foer Tree of Codes, p.95] Tree of Codes is a new opera commissioned by ...
Between the pages of the world…
Some music for the solstice as the light returns… This is the 4th movement from Tongue of the Invisible (2011) performed by Omar Ebrahim (baritone) with musikFabrik conducted by André de Ridder, recorded in June this year at the WDR Funkhaus in Köln. It’s a moment of hushed stillness in the hour-long journey of the music. ...
Gift and Angels: premieres in Munich in September
I have a couple of premieres in Munich coming up in September. On September 4, my oboe solo Gyfu (gift) will be played by six contestants in the semi-final round of the ARD Musikwettbewerb. This is the 60th anniversary of one of the big competitions for classical musicians, and the Bavarian Radio commissioned the oboe solo ...
All the Hemispheres (Hafez)
a favourite poem by Hafez… All the Hemispheres Leave the familiar for a while. Let your senses and bodies stretch out Like a welcomed season Onto the meadows and shores and hills. Open up to the Roof. Make a new water-mark on your excitement And love. Like a blooming night flower, Bestow your vital fragrance ...
Liza Lim 