Art&Network | Layale Chaker

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Layale Chaker

Composer and violinist Layale Chaker was raised on the verge of multiple musical streams in her native Lebanon. Her complex sound universe, described by NPR as “beguiling” with “bright and beautiful strands… gorgeous, wine-dark swirls,” lies at the intersection of classical contemporary music, jazz, Arabic music, and improvisation. Her practice is committed to art as both sanctuary and crossroads—a place where ancestral narratives meet contemporary voices in a continuous reimagination of the world we inherit, live in and bequeath. A 2020-2022 Jerome Hill Fellow, Chaker is also recipient of the 2022 Opera America Discovery 2022 Award, among many other accolades.

This past year has seen the premiere of a solo commissioned evening-length work, Qarar/Jawab, by the Venice 2024 Biennale , and the New York Philharmonic present the world premiere of her double concerto, “Dawning”, alongside Kinan Azmeh, for clarinet, violin and orchestra, co-commissioned with Nebraska Crossroads Music Festival and Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra.

“Ruinous Gods”, Chaker’s debut full-length chamber opera in collaboration with librettist Lisa Schlesinger, saw its world premiere at the 2024 Spoleto Festival, followed by its European premiere at Wuppertal Opera in the fall of 2024. Ruinous Gods uses elements from myths and fairy tales to create a 21st-century fantasia exploring how mass displacement triggers profound psychological trauma among its youngest sufferers. 2024 will also bring the release of a new double portrait album on In a Circle Records, one disc featuring Chaker’s classical works performed by the ETHEL Quartet, and the other a complementary portrait with Chaker’s chamber jazz quintet, Sarafand.

Layale recently completed a year-long residency as part of WQXR’s Artist Propulsion Lab and premiered a new work for violin and choir at Morgenland Festival Osnabruck in Germany with the choral ensemble Capella Amsterdam. She has worked with Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, Ziad Rahbani, Johnny Gandelsman, Holland Baroque, Oxford Orchestra, New World Symphony, London Jazz Festival, Alderburgh Festival, Junger Kunstler Festival Bayreuth, Lucerne Festival, Beethoven Festival Bonn, and Avignon Festival among others, with featured performances at the Berlin Philharmonic, Abbaye de Royaumont, Hancher, The Stone, National Sawdust, Royal Albert Hall, and Wigmore Hall.

Layale’s debut album Inner Rhyme (In a Circle Records, 2019) was named “Top of The World” by Songlines, ranked #2 on NPR’s 10 Best Releases, lived at #1 for several weeks on Amazon Music, and received rave reviews by the The New York Times, BBC Music Magazine, Strings Magazine, Jazz World and many others. Composed between Beirut, Paris and London from 2016-2018 and recorded in New York over the summer of 2018, the album unveils musical threads that are mapped through the rhythmical cycles of the twelve classical Arabic poetic meters, the fluidity of oral and free forms, the abstraction of language into the physical contour of verses and the percussive potential of words.

Layale Chaker commenced her musical training at the National Higher Conservatory of Beirut in her native country, before pursuing higher degrees at the Conservatoire de Paris and the Royal Academy of Music in London. She is a Laureate of the 2019 Concours international de Chant-Piano Nadia et Lili Boulanger; Finalist of the 2018 Rolex Mentor & Protege Prize; winner of the 2017 Ruth Anderson Competition; and recipient of the 2019 Diaphonique Franco-British Commission Prize, the 2018 Arab Fund for Arts and Culture Grant and the 2018 Royal Academy of Music Guinness Award.

Progetti

Program: Radio Afloat

With Quintet – Phillip Golub (piano), Jake Charkey (cello), Sam Minaie (double bass), John Hadfield (drums) OR Trio – Phillip Golub (piano), John Hadfield (drums)

“Radio Afloat”, the vision of a radio lost at sea, evokes a reflection on the intertwined destinies of people and the natural world, which manifest even louder in times of collective pain; a commentary on the ebb and flow of politics of power and conflict that further the vulnerability of the land and those who tend to it. It’s written as a suite of eight movements, and it echoes “The Trace of Blue Passion”, a poem by Lebanese author Ounsi el-Hage:

“… And just as birds flock wisely / I trekked from ocean to ocean / From peak to branch / From night to night to night / Until I was hit / With the prestige of sweet madness. / After we witnessed the extent of birds’ wisdom / I remind you that it is in the nature of creatures / To harm themselves.
I was a turtle on the rocks / Engraved on tree trunks and bolsters / Engraved on rings / Engraved on the ankles of mountains. / And I saw space / So I saw space / And when I saw its beauty, I fell in love with a dove who carried me. / And when she smelled, adoringly, the earth on me / She laid me down in the soil / And from the dove I raised myself…” (translated from Arabic by Sara Elkamel)