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 National Luminary Award at the 2022 Art Music Awards. In 2023 she was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia, and earlier this year received the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for her cello concerto A Sutured World.

“I am deeply honoured to receive this award,” Lim said.

“Music and the arts can be sources of joy, as well as acts of resilience and resistance. Too often, the arts are valued mainly for their practical or economic benefits, rather than as a vital expression of human freedom and creativity. Richard Gill believed passionately in that freedom, and I am honoured to play a small part in carrying his vision forward.”

Liza Lim and Freya Schack-Arnott. Photo © Lauren Murphy

The organisers have also announced the recipients of the 2026 State and Territory Luminary Awards, recognising individuals and organisations for their contribution to art music across Australia.

This year’s recipients are Michael Sollis (ACT, posthumously), People’s Republic (NSW), Melanie Walters (SA), Chamber Made (Victoria), Van Diemen’s Band (Tasmania), Alex Raineri (Queensland) and Hannah Lee Tungate (Western Australia).

The remaining Art Music Award winners will be announced during the ceremony on 19 August at The Timber Yard in Port Melbourne. Hosted by Namila Benson, the event will feature performances curated by Sia Ahmad, with artists including Eric Avery and Flinders Quartet, Sonya Lifschitz, Bhairavi Raman and Nanthesh Sivarajah, David Moran, Maryam Rahmani and Sebastian Collen, and Reuben Lewis with Michelle Nicolle and choir.

The Art Music Awards celebrate achievement across contemporary classical music, jazz, improvised music, sound art and experimental practice, recognising composers, performers and community leaders from across Australia.