Liza Lim AM to Receive Prestigious Richard Gill Award at 2026 Art Music Awards

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

Lim will be presented with the honour during the ceremony on Wednesday, August 19th, recognising her contributions to Australian composition, education, research and gender equality.

One of Australia's most prominent contemporary composers, Lim is known for exploring ritual, ecology and relationships between people and the more-than-human world. 

Her catalogue spans chamber and orchestral music as well as five operas, with her work commissioned and performed by orchestras and ensembles internationally. 

It includes large-scale cycle Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus, which considers environmental crises and the act of listening to damaged ecosystems.

“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.”

Lim became the inaugural Sculthorpe Chair of Australian Music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 2019 and, in 2025, became the first musician to receive an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship. 

The five-year program explores how music can respond to urgent climate and social issues. 

Her gender equality initiatives, including the award-winning Composing Women program, previously earned her the National Luminary Award at the 2022 Art Music Awards . She was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 2023, and received the 2026 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for her cello concerto, “A Sutured World”.

The 2026 State and Territory Luminary Award recipients have also been announced. They include Brisbane Music Festival artistic director Alex Raineri in QLD, experimental music venue and studio People's Republic in NSW, and the late composer and educator Michael Sollis, who will be honoured posthumously in the ACT. 

Chamber Made Artistic Director and CEO Tamara Saulwick has received the Victorian award, describing it as recognition of the company's four decades championing adventurous new work. 

The remaining Art Music Award winners will be revealed at the Melbourne ceremony, which will feature performances curated by Sia Ahmad. Presented by APRA AMCOS and the Australian Music Centre, the Art Music Awards recognise creators, performers and community leaders working across contemporary classical music, jazz, improvised music, sound art and experimental practice. 

More information on the awards can be found via the website.