Professor Liza Liml.lim@hud.ac.uk | 01484 471280
Liza Lim is Professor of Composition and Director of CeReNeM, the Centre for Research in New Music, joining the University of Huddersfield in 2008. Previously she held a DAAD Artist-in Residence award in Berlin (2007-08) and Senior creative fellowships from the Ian Potter Cultural Trust and the Australia Council.
Lim’s research and compositional work is focused on the area of intercultural exchange, looking particularly at Chinese and at Australian Indigenous art, aesthetics and ritual culture. Key works include three operas: The Oresteia (1993), Moon Spirit Feasting (1999, commissioned by the Adelaide and Melbourne Festivals with seasons in Berlin, Zurich, Tokyo and Brisbane) and The Navigator (2008) which premiered at the Brisbane Festival followed by seasons at the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts, Chekhov International Theatre Festival Moscow and Festival d’Automne à Paris.
Her work has been recognized with major commissions from organizations such as the Holland Festival and Ensemble musikFabrik, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio, BBC, WDR and SWR Symphony Orchestras, Ensemble Intercontemporain Paris, Festival d’Automne à Paris, Lucerne Festival, Salzburg Festival, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart and Pinakothek der Moderne Munich. She was composer-in-residence with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 2005-06 and has worked closely with musicians of the ELISION Ensemble for over 20 years.
Awards include the Paul Lowin Prize for the orchestral work ‘Ecstatic Architecture’ (2004), Fromm Foundation Award (Harvard), Australia Council and Ian Potter Cultural Trust Senior Fellowships, DAAD Artist-in-Residence in Berlin in 2007-08, Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, UK. She received a British Academy grant in 2011 to collaborate with Prof. Eric Clarke and Dr Mark Doffman (Oxford) on a project looking at ‘distributed creativity’. She was appointed one of the founding members of the Akademie der Künste der Welt, Cologne in 2012.
She has a distinguished publication history over twenty years with Casa Ricordi (Milan, London & Munich) with a catalogue of over 50 compositions. Recent publications include the opera The Navigator (Ricordi London, 2008), two orchestral works: Pearl, Ochre, Hair String and The Guest (both Ricordi Munich, 2010 and on CD with Hat Hut, 2012) and the 1-hour cycle Tongue of the Invisible (Ricordi Munich 2011; WERGO CD 2012) written for jazz pianist, Uri Caine, baritone Omar Ebrahim and musikFabrik. Other CDs of her music have been released by Hat Hut, ABC-Classics, Dischi Ricordi, Neos and Vox Australis.
Liza Lim gained her PhD from the University of Queensland, MMus from the University of Melbourne and BA (music) from the Victorian College of the Arts. She has given guest lectures and masterclasses at the University of California San Diego & Berkeley, Cornell University, New York University, Manhattan School of Music and Getty Research Institute LA. More recently, she has given lectures at the Institute of Musical Research, London, Royal College of Music, RMIT’s Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory in Melbourne, National University of Singapore, University of Glasgow and in 2011-12, gives talks at Oxford, Cambridge and BathSpa Universities.
She has taught at a number of international summer schools including the Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt (1998, 2010), Bregenz Opera Masterclass (2007), Tokyo Wonder Site (2007) and Fondation Royaumont in France (2010). In 2012, she serves on composition juries for the Ensemble Intercontemporain Paris/ Danish Music Information Centre, Prix Annelie de Man (Amsterdam) and Synthermia (Thessaloniki).
Research Areas
Current projects:
2011-14: ‘Tree of Codes’, opera, a commission of Ensemble musikFabrik Cologne, HELLERAU-European Centre for the Arts, Dresden and festival partners for a premiere in 2014. The work is based on Jonathan Safran Foer’s book ‘Tree of Codes’ and explores multiple levels of narrativity in music and theatre.
Associated research projects: 1/ to develop interactive digital score technology in collaboration with Ricordi Munich music publishing. 2/work with newly developed double-bell instruments (trumpet, horn, euphonium) in collaboration with Ensemble musikFabrik. 3/ extend technical knowledge and new notational approaches for the bassoon and brass instruments.
2010-12: ‘Composing with improvisational strategies’
Composition of ‘Tongue of the Invisible’, a commission of the Holland Festival, Ensemble musikFabrik and Kunststiftung NRW; premiere June 2011, Amsterdam, with further performances in Cologne (2011) and Sydney (2012).
Associated study of ‘distributed creativity’, research project in collaboration with Prof Eric Clarke and Dr Mark Doffman, University of Oxford (part of AHRC Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice) and musicians of Ensemble musikFabrik, Cologne.
Lim, L (2013) Liza Lim, Orchestral Works [Audio] (In Press)
Lim, L (2013) Axis Mundi for solo bassoon [Composition]
Lim, L (2012) 3 Angels [Composition]
Clarke, E., Doffman, M. and Lim, L. (2012) ‘Distributed Creativity in 'Tongue of the Invisible'’. In: 12th ICMPC - 8th ESCOM Joint Conference , 23-28 July 2012, Thessaloniki, Greece
Lim, L (2012) ‘Patterns of Ecstasy’ Darmstädter Beiträge zur neuen Musik , 21, pp. 27-43. ISSN 978-3-7957-0816-0
Lim, L (2011) ‘3 Angels’ Escalier du Chant (44), pp. 1-4.
Lim, L (2011) Tongue of the Invisible (2011) [Composition]
Lim, L (2011) Sonorous Body [Audio]
Lim, L (2011) Gyfu (gift), 2011 [Composition]
Bellamy, M., Harrison, B., Cassidy, A. and Lim, L. (2010) Transference [Audio]
Cassidy, A., Barrett, R., Johnson, E., Hübler, K. and Lim, L. (2010) Strange forces [Audio]
Lim, L (2010) Pearl, Ochre, Hair String [Composition]
Lim, L (2010) Wild Winged One [Audio]
Lim, L. and Defilla, P. (2010) Music Viva, Forum der Gegenwarts musik, Musica Viva: Pearl, Ochre, Hair String [Video]
Lim, L (2010) Ehwaz (journeying) [Composition]
Lim, L (2010) The Guest [Composition]
Lim, L (2010) Songs found in dream [Audio]
Lim, L (2010) Invisibility [Audio]
Lim, L (2009) Invisibility [Composition]
Lim, L (2009) ‘Staging an Aesthetics of Presence’ Search: Journal for new music and culture (6).
Lim, L (2009) Ochred String [Audio]
Lim, L (2009) The Four Seasons (after Cy Twombly) [Composition]
Lim, L (2008) The Navigator [Composition]
Lim, L (2008) The long forgetting [Composition]
Lim, L (2008) Well of Dreams [Composition]
Lim, L (2008) Sonorous Body [Composition]
Lim, L (2008) Sensorium [Composition]
Lim, L (2008) Ochred string [Composition]
Lim, L. and Ford, A. (2008) ‘Liza Lim’. In: Talking to Kinky and Karlheinz. Sydney, Australia: ABC Books. . ISBN 9780733320088
Lim, L (2008) Weaver-of-fictions [Audio]
Gruchy, J. and Lim, L. (2007) ‘Alchemical Journeys. Part Two: Liza Lim’ Resonate Magazine .
Gruchy, J. and Lim, L. (2007) ‘Alchemical Journeys. Part One: Liza Lim’ Resonate Magazine .
Lim, L (2007) Wild-winged one [Composition]
Lim, L (2007) Weaver-of-fictions [Composition]
Lim, L (2007) ‘Red, White, Black: Three stages of illumination’. In: Judith Wright: Conversations. : Judith Wright. pp. 49-52. ISBN 9780646478203
Invited Lectures: 2009 ‘Hybrid Arts’ Asia-Pacific Week Festival, Radial-System Berlin, 2009 Institute for Musical Research London (New Directions Seminar), 2009 Royal College of Music, 2009 New York University Residency (Steinhardt; Arts and Music; China House Research Centre), 2009 Manhattan School of Music,2009 RMIT-Spatial Information Architecture Lab Melbourne, 2009 National University of Singapore, 2010 Fondation Royaumont, 2010 Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt,2010 University of Glasgow, 2010 IETM Public Lecture series Melbourne, Sydney and Perth (Australia), 2011 Univeristy of Oxford Composer Speaks, 2012 Research Seminar series BathSpa Univeristy, 2012 University of Cambridge; Künstuniversität Graz, Austria, 2012
International Juries & Summer schools: 2010 'Voix Nouvelles' composition course of Fondation Royaumont (France); 2010 Interantionales Musikinstitut Darmstadt (Germany).
Jury member: 2010 Incontri Internazionali Franco Donatoni (Milan); 2012 Synthermia Composition Award (Thessaloniki); 2012 Prix Annelie de Man (Holland); EnsembleIntercontemporain Paris and Royal Danish Academy of Music composers competition.
International commissions: 2009 International Trumpet Guild; 2009 Fondation Royaumont; 2010 Donaueschinger Musiktage; 2010 Bavarian Radio Orchestra; 2011 Holland Festival/ Musikfabrik; 2011 Internationalen Musikwettbewerb der ARD; 2011 Pinakothek de Moderne, Munich; 2012 Ensemble musikFabrik and HELLERAU-European Centre for Contemporary Art
Major festival presentations: 2008 Maerzmusik Berlin, 2008 Brisbane Festival, 2008 Melbourne International Festival of the Arts, 2009 Musica Nova Helsinki, 2009 Festival d’Automne à Paris, 2009 Hybrid-Arts Festival Berlin, 2009 Chekhov International Theatre Festival Moscow, 2010 Musica Viva Munich, 2010 Donaueschinger Musiktage, 2010 West Australian Symphony Orchestra season; 2011 Holland Festival; 2012 BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/BBC Hear and Now
Media: Broadcasts, radio: ABC, BBC, SWR, WDR, Deutschlandfunk etc Broadcasts, tv: Arte (feature made by Pandore tv); Bayern-Alpha (feature made by BR-Alpha); Written features: journals eg: Tempo (2011), Sound and Music (2010); books: eg: Kerry, G.(2009) New Classical Music, Composing Australia, UNSW Press, 2009; Subject of studies on Musical Creativity: Burnard, P. (2012) ‘Musical Creativities in Practice, Cambridge: C.U.P.; Music education kit: Walker, K. (2012) 'The Music of Liza Lim'. Sydney: Australian Music Centre.
Competitive Fellowships:
Fellowships: 2008 Ian Potter Senior Composer Fellowship
2007-08 DAAD Artist-in-residence Berlin
Learned Societies:
2012 Member of Akademie der Künst der Welt, Cologne
2012 Fellow of Higher Education Academy, UK
External Examiner (research degrees)
2012 External examiner PhD, Durham University
Advisory Boards:
2011-13 Member Advisory Council Institue of Musical Research (University of London)
2008-13 Board Member Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival
Prof. Lim supervises PhD and MA research students in composition, particularly portfolios exploring the following areas:
Current composition students are undertaking research in the following areas:
PhD
Tamara Friebel Generative Transcriptions: The dissociative self and associative states, an architecture of the self
Barbara Ellison Sonic Phantoms
Robert Dahm Framing Intentions: Perceptual agency in the compositional process of recent pieces
Matthew Sergeant ‘the eleven churches of lalibela’: excavation as transformation of cyclic musical structures.
Sam Park The harmony of complex elements in simple forms
Chikako Morishita Shibusa: Awakening the Senses – exploring a Japanese aesthetics of restraint and spontaneity in musical composition
Pia Palme Milarepa and Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz (an opera); Biotic and Contemplative Aspects of Contemporary Music
Pedro Alvarez Alternative ways of formal composition: a structural approach
MA (res)
Lee Chie Tsang Chinese calligraphic thinking in my compositional work
Michael Baldwin Textural stability and instability, physicality in performance and the articulation of musical grids
Prof. Lim is also on the supervisory team for PhD candidates:
Lefteris Papadimitriou (with Dr Cassidy)
Ryoko Akama (with Prof. Adkins)
Eilon Morris (with Dr Middleton, drama)
HCR CD label in partnership with Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival
Director of Centre for Research in New Music (CeReNeM)
CeReNeM Seminars
MRes and PhD supervision
Undergraduate Composition Masterclass (2nd & 3rd year)
