Extraordinary, inclusive and visionary music… MusicWeb International

Short Bio

Liza Lim is an Australian composer, educator, and researcher whose music thinks with ritual, material agency, and environmental philosophy across the cultural lands of a more‑than‑human world. Her practice articulates relations rather than objects, braiding beauty and rage with female spiritual lineages into emergent ecologies of sound.

Her large-scale cycle Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus has resonated globally for its urgent call to ecological listening. Lim’s music—spanning chamber and orchestral works and five operas—is published by Ricordi Berlin and widely commissioned by leading orchestras and ensembles. She holds the Sculthorpe Chair of Australian Music at the Sydney Conservatorium.In 2026, Lim received the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for her cello concerto A Sutured World, affirming her place as one of the most compelling voices in contemporary music.

Ricordi | UMPG
Sydney Conservatorium of Music (staff page)
LIM_List of Works by Themes

Latest news

‘A Sutured World’ has won the 2026 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition

Long Bio (2025)

Liza Lim is an Australian composer, educator, and researcher whose music thinks with ritual, material agency, and environmental philosophy across the cultural lands of a more‑than‑human world. Her practice articulates relations rather than objects, braiding beauty and rage with female spiritual lineages into emergent ecologies of sound. Examples include 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. Lim’s work often poses speculative questions about the sentience of things—time, notation, and music itself—while engaging deeply with the more-than-human realm. Her large-scale cycle Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus (2018) has found wide international resonance for its call to ecological listening in the Anthropocene. In 2026, she received the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for her cello concerto A Sutured World (2024).

Lim is Professor of Composition and holds the Sculthorpe Chair of Australian Music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney. She is the first musician to receive an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship (2025–29), leading a five-year program addressing urgent climate and social issues through music. Her gender equity initiatives, including the Composing Women program, have had far-reaching impact on commissioning, performance, and leadership in Australian music, earning the 2020 ClassicalNEXT Innovation Award. Lim has taught and lectured internationally, including masterclasses at Darmstadt, Royaumont, Banff, and guest professorships at Frankfurt HfMDK and Shanghai Conservatory. She was the Director of the Centre for Research in New Music (CeReNeM) at the University of Huddersfield (2008-2017). Her catalogue spans chamber works, orchestral cycles, and five operas, published by Casa Ricordi since 1992. Her discography includes over 40 CDs and 10 portrait albums on labels such as BR-Klassik, KAIROS, WERGO, and NMC. British writer Tim Rutherford-Johnson’s monograph The Music of Liza Lim (2022) offers a comprehensive study of her work.

Lim has been commissioned by leading orchestras and ensembles including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, 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 JACK Quartet. Her music has featured at major festivals worldwide—Berliner Festspiele, Venice Biennale, Lucerne Festival, Festival d’Automne à Paris, Ojai Festival, and all major Australian festivals. She has held ‘Composer-in-Residence’ positions with the Sydney Symphony, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Casa da Música Porto. She was named ‘Composer of the Year’ in the 2024 OPUS KLASSIK Awards and awarded the 13th Roche Commission for the 2026 Lucerne Festival. Other honors include the Australia Council’s Don Banks Award (2018), the Hans and Gertrud Zender Foundation’s Happy New Ears Prize (2021), and the APRA AMCOS National Luminary Award (2022). She was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2023 for her contribution to Australian music.

Liza Lim studied at the Victorian College of the Arts (BA, music), University of Melbourne (MMus) and the University of Queensland (PhD). She was DAAD Artist-in-Berlin in 2007-08 and was a Fellow 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 elected a member of the Akademie der Künste Berlin in 2022.

Liza Lim (b.1966; Boorloo/ Perth) lives on unceded Wurundjeri lands in Naarm/ Melbourne, Australia