Biography
At the age of 11, Lim was encouraged by her teachers at Presbyterian Ladies' College, Melbourne to turn from piano and violin to composition. She has said that she "owes everything to them". Lim earned her Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Queensland, her Master of Music from the University of Melbourne (1996), and her Bachelor of Arts from the Victorian College of the Arts (1986). She has studied composition in Melbourne with Richard David Hames, Riccardo Formosa, and in Amsterdam with Ton de Leeuw. She has been a guest lecturer at the Darmstadt Summer School, the University of California, San Diego, Cornell University, Getty Research Institute, major Australian universities and at the IRCAM Agora Festival. She was a lecturer of composition at Melbourne University in 1991. Lim was the guest curator for the twilight concert series of the 2006 Adelaide Festival of Arts.
She has been commissioned by some of the most eminent performers in the world including the Los Angeles Philharmonic (for whom she wrote 'Ecstatic Architecture' for the inaugural season of the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall), Ensemble InterContemporain, Ensemble Modern, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Arditti String Quartet. 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 all the major Australian festivals.
Since 1986, Lim has worked extensively with members of the ELISION Ensemble; she is married to Daryl Buckley, its artistic director. In 2005, Lim was appointed the composer-in-residence with the Sydney Symphony for two years. Among other works, the orchestra commissioned—jointly with the radio station Bayerischer Rundfunk—her work The Compass; in its premiere performance on 23 August 2006 at the Sydney Opera House it was conducted by Alexander Briger, William Barton played the didgeridoo.
Sponsored by the German Academic Exchange Service, she 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.
Read more about this topic: Liza Lim
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