Category: newsletter
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 ...
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 ...
A Wiko Year in Berlin
(long newsletter post…) My year as composer-in-residence at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute of Advanced Studies) or ‘Wiko’, has recently come to a close (1 Sept 2021-30 June 2022). This is a residency like no other in which the ‘obligations’ comprise attending 4 lunches and a dinner during the week and giving a talk to ...
News: Happy New Ears Prize
I’m incredibly honoured and touched to have been awarded the 2021 Happy New Ears prize from the Hans and Gertrud Zender Foundation. The composer Hans Zender (1936-2019) with his wife Gertrud Zender set up the prize referring to John Cage’s invitation to “listen without prejudice”. Awarded since 2011 in close collaboration with the Bavarian Academy ...
Videos in pandemic-times
One emergent positive amongst the many negative impacts on the arts in these pandemic times has been the opening up of access to concerts and festival events from all over the world (as long as one has a good internet connection). In the past weeks, I’ve been able to catch fresh premieres from the 2021 ...
more than human songs
[Image credit: Riot Ensemble, ‘the arrival of the plastic’, Kings Place London, 14 Feb 2020] I’m very privileged to have several ‘in the flesh’ performances of my music coming up. My large 40-minute work Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus (2018) will be performed by the group that premiered and recorded it, Ensemble Klangforum Wien, with ...
Ricordi newsletter
Ricordi newsletter: Spring Highlights: what’s new with Liza Lim Also: Interview with Lorelei Dowling about music & ecology for IDAGIO Live
Questions for the new year 2020
I quit Facebook [update: for awhile…] and consequently had muuuch more time to read for pleasure – books given as Christmas presents where you can buzz through the pages in a couple of days: Terry Pratchet/Neil Gaiman’s classic Good Omens & Gaiman’s How the Marquis got his Coat Back and a rather psychedelic book called Path Notes of an ...
CD release | radio portrait, March 2019
New CD – Speak, be Silent 15 March 2019: new CD release from the Riot Ensemble on HCR/NMC with works by Chaya Czernowin, Rebecca Saunders, Anna Thorvaldsdóttir, Mirela Ivičević and myself. Violin soloist Sarah Saviet and the Riot Ensemble conducted by Aaron Holloway-Nahum give a very passionate account of Speak, Be Silent. CD launch concert: ...
Latest news – April-June 2018
I’ve had an exciting few months with the world and national premieres of a number of large works and the privilege of working with extraordinary musicians and inspiring human beings. The most recent work to come to fruition was Atlas of the Sky (2018), a 75-minute staged work premiered 3 days ago at the Melbourne Recital Centre, ...
The Spinning World
2016 Tree of Codes How Forests Think An ocean beyond earth the turning dance of the bee ~ Ronda – The Spinning World ~ ** ** **** just finished: the last piece for the year, Ronda – The Spinning World, premieres on 25 February 2017 in Frankfurt, performed by Ensemble Modern with a big trumpet part ...
My exhale is your inhale
It’s been a lovely harvest September with two premieres of my music. What a privilege to hear and see Séverine Ballon weave her magic in An ocean beyond earth and to work with the equally magical Wu Wei and ELISION on How Forests think. I’m hearing a music which I think has a different approach to form than in ...
Travels in hyper-reality
I have criss-crossed multiple time zones in the last 6 weeks: Melbourne-Shanghai-Melbourne-Beijing-Melbourne-Salvador da Bahia-Melbourne – the constant bead in this roaming necklace is home in Australia, with each contrasting pendant ever more distant, strange and colourful. It’s a privilege to be invited to travel for one’s work and if there’s one thing I’ve learnt as ...
Tree of Codes trailer, images, press
[photos (c) Paul Leclaire] Also see previous post for detailed information about the opera, libretto etc. * Articles Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, Vanishing Languages, Reincarnated as Music The New York Times, March 30, 2016. [+ related teaching & learning resource + radio broadcast] Raoul Mörchen, Wie bleibt von der Strasse der Krokodile, Kölnischer Rundschau, 6.04.16 [pdf scan] Programme book_Tree-of-Codes_2016 ...
Winding bodies: 3 knots shortlisted for 2015 BASCA Award
Winding Bodies: 3 knots has been shortlisted in the large chamber music category of this year’s BASCA awards. Here’s what I wrote about the piece: A knot is the magical image of time turned back on itself – think of a knot and you start thinking of the actions and process of tying it! The ...
memento mori – assemblage #1
Svetlana Boym – on Nostalgia [Adaptation and elaboration from Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, Basic Books, New York 2001.] the wandering scales at the end of this… …the breathing of a stone rubbed on a granite tile I played part 14, [stone-on-stone], as one of 100 percussionists in Speak Percussion’s production of Michael Pisaro’s A wave ...
September: 2 CDs and a premiere
I’m excited about September. It brings the launch of two CDs embodying the fruit of special collaborations with the musicians of the Cikada Ensemble and with the ‘cellist Séverine Ballon. Cikada will launch their disc, which was recorded live at last year’s Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, on 12 September at the Ultima Festival in Oslo. ...
Music from hcmf// on BBC3 + reviews
A live concert recording of Winding Bodies: 3 knots performed by the Cikada Ensemble at the Huddersfield Festival of Contemporary music on November 23rd is available online on BBC3 iplayer for the next month: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04sv2lv Cikada’s performance of The Heart’s Ear is also online until end of Jan 2015 at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04vdfs4 I recently did an interview with ...
‘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, ...
Liza Lim 