Sylvia Lim is a composer based in the UK. Her works are intimate, exploring a small amount of material in depth. She is interested in the materiality of sound, notions of close listening, perception, rawness and instability. Her music is often influenced by natural phenomena and the visual arts. She works very closely with musicians, visual artists and dancers. 

Recent commissions include music for the Aurora Orchestra, Ars Nova Ensemble Instrumental + The Riot Ensemble, EXAUDI and Music We’d Like to Hear. Sylvia’s music has been performed by Plus-Minus Ensemble, CoMA Singers, Liam Byrne, Ben Smith, Natasha Zielazinski, Musarc, Fournier Trio, Kaleidoscope Saxophone Quartet, and tick tock. Her music was published in the CoMA Partsong Book, and performed at the London Contemporary Music Festival, CoMA Festival, BEAST FEaST 2021 and Barbican OpenFest’s Unfinished. She was on the LPO Young Composers Programme and Psappha’s Composing for Piano scheme in 2019/20, and is now on the RPS Composers Programme as a Rosie Johnson RPS / Wigmore Hall Apprentice Composer for 2020/21. Her music has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and KFAI.

Sylvia completed her PhD (‘Exploring organic decay through sound’) at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where she also gained a first class Bachelor of Music (Honours) and a Master of Music with distinction, winning the Ian Horsbrugh Memorial Prize for Composition in 2015. She now teaches composition there.

www.sylvialim.co