Internationally acclaimed composer, educator and researcher Liza Lim AM will receive the Richard Gill Award for Distinguished Services to Australian Music at the 2026 Art Music Awards in Melbourne later this month.

Presented by APRA AMCOS and the Australian Music Centre, the award recognises Lim’s outstanding contribution to Australian music through a career spanning composition, research, education and advocacy.

Liza Lim at Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Photo © Fiona Wolf/University of Sydney

Lim, currently the Sculthorpe Chair of Australian Music and Professor of Composition at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, is internationally recognised for works exploring ritual, ecology and humanity’s relationship with the natural world.

Her catalogue includes chamber, orchestral and operatic works, among them the large-scale cycle Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus, which has attracted international attention for its engagement with environmental themes.

In 2019, Lim became the inaugural Sculthorpe Chair of Australian Music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She also became the first musician to receive an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship, leading a five-year research program examining climate and social issues through music.

Her contributions to gender equity in composition, including the award-winning Composing Women program, previously earned her the...