Liza Lim (b. 1966) is an Australian composer, educator and researcher whose music focusses on collaborative and transcultural practices. The roots of beauty (in noise), time effects in the anthropocene and the sensoria of ecological connection are ongoing concerns in her compositional work. Her four operas: “The Oresteia” (1993), “Moon Spirit Feasting” (2000), “The Navigator” (2007) and “Tree of Codes” (2016), and her major cycle “Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus” (2018) explore themes of desire, memory, ritual transformation and the uncanny. Her genre-defying percussion ritual/opera “Atlas of the Sky” (2018), is a work involving community participants that investigates the emotional power and energy dynamics of crowds.
Liza Lim has received commissions and performances from some of the world’s preeminent orchestras (the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio Orchestra, BBC, WDR, SWR) and was a resident composer with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 2005 and 2006. She has had a 30-year collaboration with the ELISION Ensemble and has regularly worked with Ensemble Musikfabrik, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Ensemble Modern, Klangforum Wien, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Arditti String Quartet and JACK Quartet, among others.
Her fourth opera, “Tree of Codes”, was commissioned and premiered by the Cologne Opera, Ensemble Musikfabrik and Hellerau in Cologne and Dresden was described as ’a major contribution to the musical theatre of our time’ (Egbert Hiller, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, May 2016). It had the distinction of receiving a new production at the Spoleto Festival, USA in May and June 2018.