Liza Lim | Artist
Liza Lim AM is an Australian modern composer born 1966 in Perth, Western Australia. Lim is one of Australia's most celebrated composers on the world stage. She writes concert music as well as music theatre and has collaborated with artists on installation and video projects. Her work reflects interests in Asian ritual culture, the aesthetics of Aboriginal art and shows the influence of non-Western music performance practice. Born to Chinese parents, both doctors, Lim spent her early years in Brunei before being sent to boarding school. At the age of 11, she was encouraged by her teachers at Presbyterian Ladies' College, Melbourne, who introduced her to experimental composers from the 1960s such as John Cage and Yoko Ono, to turn from piano and violin to composition. She has said that she "owes everything to them". Lim earned her PhD from the University of Queensland, her Master of Music from the University of Melbourne, and her BA from the Victorian College of the Arts. She has studied composition in Melbourne with Richard David Hames, Riccardo Formosa, and in Amsterdam with Ton de Leeuw. Lim's commissions include the Los Angeles Philharmonic, for whom she wrote Ecstatic Architecture for the opening of the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall, Ensemble InterContemporain, Ensemble Modern, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Arditti String Quartet and the Cikada Ensemble. Her work has featured at festivals such as Festival d'automne à Paris, MaerzMusik at the Berliner Festspiele, Venice Biennale, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and major Australian festivals. Since 1986, Lim has worked with the Elision Ensemble, and is married to Daryl Buckley, its artistic director. In 2005, Lim was appointed the composer-in-residence with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Among other works, the orchestra commissioned—jointly with the radio station Bayerischer Rundfunk—her work The Compass; which premiered in August 2006 at the Sydney Opera House. She also spent one year in 2007/2008 as artist-in-residence in Berlin where she developed her third opera, The Navigator, inspired by Tristan and Isolde to a libretto by Patricia Sykes. She was appointed professor in composition at the University of Huddersfield in March 2008, and in March 2017 appointed to the composition unit at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. The discography of Lim's compositions is rapidly increasing as her reputation grows. A small sample of recommended recordings includes Speak Be Silent (2019) by Riot Ensemble, Singing in Tongues (2021) and The Heart's Ear (1999) by Elision Ensemble, and Orchestral Works (2015) by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Lim's music focusses on collaborative and transcultural practices. Beauty, rage & noise, ecological connection, and female spiritual lineages. Her music is marked by visceral energy and vibrant colour and often explores ritual forms and performance aesthetics from Asian and Australian Aboriginal cultural sources. Some recurring themes include 'hiddenness and revelation', 'violence and meditation' and ecstatic transformation. Among Lim's favourite recollections is a Tokyo performance of her second opera, Moon Spirit Feasting. Based on Chinese street theatre traditions, the opera explores the different versions of a legendary moon spirit, an important figure in Asian culture. "The opera just took on a completely different resonance in front of an Asian audience who knew the characters and the stories," Lim says.
Artist Website: lizalimcomposer.com
Featured Albums: Liza Lim
Related Artists: Riot Ensemble, Elision
