was born in Perth, Australia, in 1966 to Chinese parents. Her music education took place in Australia and Holland (Victorian College of the Arts, the Universities of Melbourne and Queensland and Sweelinck Conservatorium Amsterdam). Since March 2008 she is Professor of composition at the University of Huddersfield, UK. Lim’s œuvre includes three chamber operas (which explore ideas such as constructing identity through narrative ambivalence, memory, possession, the structures of desire); symphonic and large-scale chamber works, meditation/improvisation projects as well as collaborative installations with a number of visual artists. Liza Lim’s work often explores intercultural issues especially in relation to Chinese and Australian Aboriginal art and aesthetics. Her music is characterized by a dynamic, visceral, metamorphosing character and a sense of embodied rituality. Liza Lim has received commissions from, among others, the Los Angeles Philharmonic (2004), Ensemble intercontemporain (1993, 1999, 2000, 2005), Salzburg Festival (2005), Festival d’Automne à Paris (2005), Lucerne Festival (2007), Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (2006, 2008, 2010), Donaueschinger Musiktage (2001, 2010). She was Composer-in-Residence with the Sydney Symphony in 2005-06. She has been collaborating with the ELISION ensemble since 1987. Liza Lim served as lecturer in Darmstadt in 1998.
In Summer 2010, she will offer the following:
1. Individual composition lessons
2. Open masterclass in composition where participants present and discuss their own work
3. Informal discussion in cooperation with other composers/performers
4. Presentation/seminar: „Staging an aesthetics of presence“
Liza Lim will talk about aspects of her music in relation to Australian Aboriginal cultural patterns that ritually „stage“ experiences of ecstatic transformation and spiritual journeying. She refers to the philosopher Elizabeth Grosz’ work in which both art and nature are linked as „structures of profusion“, as „intensifications“ of that which is excess to the needs of basic survival. Liza Lim is interested in the element of „presence“ that underlies aesthetic form and ways in which this „intensification“ can be embodied in performance. The format of her class will combine lecture and open discussion and is addressed to both performers and composers. She will draw examples from very recent works:
– Invisibility for Solo Cello (2009)
– Pearl, Ochre, Hair String for Orchestra (2010)

http://www.internationales-musikinstitut.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=153%3Aliza-lim&catid=42&lang=en