Liza Lim: Love Letter

Program Note

Liza Lim
Love Letter, by Sam Seyong Um after a postcard by Liza Lim

“Eugene Ughetti, the Artistic Director of Speak Percussion, commissioned Love Letter for the group’s 10th Anniversary concert. In the tradition of James Tenney’s famous postal pieces, he asked me to make a work in a similar format which I did on the plane enroute between Manchester and Melbourne in April 2011.

Obviously, the postcard as ‘score’ is merely a prompt, an invitation to the performer to participate in a process of honouring someone (‘their beloved’) and all the true work lies with the performer.” —Liza Lim

Liza Lim is an Australian composer, educator and researcher whose interests include collaborative and transcultural practices in music. Her works, and in particular four operas (The Oresteia, Moon Spirit Feasting, The Navigator and Tree of Codes), as well as the recent large-scale cycle Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus (2018) explore themes around ritual, temporal slippage and the uncanny. Her major stage work Atlas of the Sky (2018), a participatory work involving communities of trained and untrained performers, investigates the power and energy dynamics of crowds.