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 ...
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. ...
the averted gaze
I was recently given a list of interview questions and was quite unable to answer them. At first I felt that this was a reluctance on my part because I would be giving too much away. Then realised that actually, I am unable to know the answers. Whatever they might be, they don’t cohere into ...
Speak, Be Silent (2015)
Just remember, when you’re in union, you don’t have to fear that you’ll be drained. The command comes to speak, and you feel the ocean moving through you. Then comes, Be silent, as when the rain stops, and the trees in the orchard begin to draw moisture up into themselves. – Jalaluddin Rumi, excerpt fr. Mathnawi V: ...
Rug Music (2015) for solo harp
I had a lot of fun writing a short harp solo for the wonderful harpist Marshall McGuire to celebrate his birthday. There’s a short video of us chatting in a rehearsal break before the premiere in April at the Melbourne Recital Centre.
5* recommendation for HatArt disc in NZM
Dietrich Heißenbüttel, Empfehlung: Liza Lim Orchestral Works, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 2/2015 or online link A chant provides the pitch; an invocation. Merely a short sequence of four descending notes, yet highly unusual for a CD of orchestral works: it is neither the sound of European art music nor one defined by the tempered chromatic scale. Liza ...
Concentrated energy maps. Reviews of HatArt Orchestral Works CD
Updates (other reviews) 1/3/15. Gordon Kerry has a few things to say about Australian politics & cultural insularity as well the CD. Liza Lim: Orchestral Works, The Music Trust 9/2/15. Another review of the HatArt CD: ambitious, eruptive orchestral works. Andrew Clements, The Guardian, 6 Feb 2015. Liza Lim, Orchestral Works, Hat[now]Art CD review Julian ...
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 ...
Hat Art Orchestral Works CD
The CD of my orchestral works is finally officially out on Hat Art and offers perhaps a less well-known view of my work. It includes The Compass for orchestra with solo parts for flute and didgeridoo, co-commissioned by the Sydney Symphony and the Bavarian Radio Orchestra; Pearl, Ochre, Hair String for orchestra which features a ...
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 ...
Liza Lim 