Australian composer Liza Lim has been announced as the winner of the 2026 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. Presented by the University of Louisville, the award is among the world’s richest classical music honours, with a cash prize of $100,000 USD ($152,799 AUD).

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

Lim has earned the award for her new cello concerto, A Sutured World. Written for German-French cellist Nicolas Atstaedt, the work was co-commissioned by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (BRSO), the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the Amsterdam Cello Biennale and Casa da Músico Porto. It earned its world premiere in October 2024 with the BRSO, and its Australian premiere with the MSO in March 2025.

The recording of the work with Alstaedt and the BRSO earned a five-star Limelight review and was an Editor’s Choice pick for September 2025.

“A Sutured World honours scars that constitute new attributes of beauty, rather than imperfections or flaws to be hidden. Sensitivity, instability and the idea of ‘making hallucination audible’ are rendered musically with close attention to the almost infinite timbral possibilities of the cello,” wrote Limelight‘s Lisa MacKinney.

“Never less than enthralling and with extraordinary expressive capacity, particularly for the soloist, A Sutured World is destined to become a signature work of the cello repertoire.”

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

Currently Composer-in-Residence with the MSO and Casa da Músico Porto, Lim is the recipient of the 2026 Roche Commission, which sees her writing a new work to be premiered at the 2026 Lucerne Festival. She is also the first musician to be awarded an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship, and earned the prestigious title of Composer of the Year at the 2024 OPUS KLASSIK Awards.

She earned the Don Banks Award in 2018 and was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 2023 for her outstanding contributions to Australian music.

Lim is the sixth woman and second Australian winner to take home the music award. Brett Dean took the trophy home in 2009 for his violin concerto The Lost Art of Letter Writing.

Lim will accept the award on 14 April.

“I hope this recognition helps to shine a light on the vital role that music can play in shaping our understanding of the world and in responding to the urgent challenges we face,” Lim said.

“It’s both humbling and inspiring to be counted among such composers as Harrison Birtwistle, Krzysztof Penderecki and Kaija Saariaho whose work has deeply influenced my own artistic journey.”