Release Date: 26 September 2025
NMC presents String Creatures, the new album from award-winning British-Australian composer Liza Lim. The album gathers together four of Lim’s so-called ‘string creatures’, pieces which explore string both as a material and as a metaphor for relations in the world around us. As Joseph Browning puts it in the liner notes, the featured works are ‘strange beasts, with wild voices and eccentric bodies that tie humans, instruments and ideas together in novel configurations’.
String Creatures (2022) is brought to life by Grammy Award-nominated JACK Quartet, who Lim sees as a ‘hybrid organism, as a multiplicity of bodies and minds and desires’. Beginning with three short ‘diagrams of grief’, the piece goes on to weave a ‘shifting fabric of glittering sound’ (Lim). The same quartet present The Weaver’s Knot, which takes Norwegian hardanger fiddle playing as a source of inspiration. Musical tension is accumulated, held and released like the binding and unbinding of a knot.
The remaining two tracks on the album are for solo string instruments. JACK Quartet cellist Jay Campbell plays an ocean beyond earth, suggested by an ocean beneath the icy crust of one of Saturn’s moons. The cello is literally tied to a retuned violin, creating a suitably otherworldly sound-world.
Finally, the five movements of The Table of Knowledge are brought to life by Rohan Dasika (ELISION Ensemble), modifying his double bass with thread and using his own voice to evoke the traditional hallucinogenic ‘witches’ flying ointment’. As Browning says, it’s ‘hard to believe these sounds come from a single player and instrument’.
JACK Quartet
Christopher Otto & Austin Wulliman violins
John Pickford Richards viola
Jay Campbell cello
Rohan Dasika double bass
FUNDERS
The recording and production of this album was generously supported by the Sculthorpe Chair’s Fund, Sydney Conservatorium of Music; the Melbourne Recital Centre; the
Australian Cultural Fund; and the ELISION Ensemble
NMC Recordings is a charitable company (reg. no. 328052) established for the recording of contemporary music by The Holst Foundation; it is grateful for funding from Arts Council England and The Delius Trust.
RECORDING CREDITS
String Creatures, an ocean beyond earth and The Weaver’s Knot were recorded at Melbourne Recital Centre, Australia on 9 April 2024
The Table of Knowledge was recorded at Melbourne Recital Centre, Australia on 15 December 2024
ALISTAIR McLEAN Recording Engineer, Mixing, Mastering
LIZA LIM Producer
String Creatures (2022) was commissioned for the JACK Quartet by Lucerne Festival, Miller Theatre at Columbia University and the Melbourne Recital Centre and premiered
on 14 August 2022, Lucerne, Switzerland
an ocean beyond earth (2016) was written as a gift for Séverine Ballon and premiered on 9 Sept 2016, Melbourne, Australia
The Weaver’s Knot (2014) was commissioned by Wittenertage für neue Kammermusik and written as a gift for the Arditti String Quartet for their 40th Anniversary and premiered on 10 May 2014, Witten, Germany
The Table of Knowledge (2017) was commissioned for Florentin Ginot by Acht Brücken | Musik für Köln and premiered on 2 May 2018, Cologne, Germany
© NMC Recordings Ltd 2025
Catalogue number: NMC D294