norman lebrecht
December 02, 2025
The 2026 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition has been awarded to the Australian Liza Lim for her work “A Sutured World.” The piece was premiered in October 2024 by cellist Nicolas Altstaedt and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra within Munich’s Musica Viva series.
Lim. 59, is Chair of Australian Music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Her work, we read, ‘reflects her interests in Chinese culture and the aesthetics of Aboriginal art and shows the influence of non-Western music performance practice.’
She is the second Aussie to win the $100,000 Grawemeyer, after Brett Dean in 2009.