Layale Chaker and Maeve Gilchrist: Smoke Veins

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.  

In 2024, her work “Qarar/Jawab” premiered at the Venice Biennale and “Dawning,” a double concerto, premiered with the New York Philharmonic. Her debut chamber opera, “Ruinous Gods,” premiered at the 2024 Spoleto Festival before its European debut at Wuppertal Opera. She also recently released a double portrait album on In a Circle Records, featuring both her classical works and chamber jazz quintet, Sarafand. 

Edinburgh-born harpist and composer Maeve Gilchrist has been credited as an innovator on her native instrument and taken the Celtic (lever) Harp to new levels of performance and visibility. Currently based in Kingston, NY, Gilchrist tours internationally as a solo artist and composer as well as being a member of the grammy-winning Silkroad ensemble and Arooj Aftab’s Grammy-winning Vulture Prince Ensemble. She has performed and recorded with such luminaries as Yo-Yo Ma, Frankie Gavin, Esperanza Spalding, Ambrose Akinmusire and Solas. As a composer, Gilchrist straddles the worlds of folk and classical with pieces including two original concertos for symphony Orchestra and Celtic Harp along with various works for harp and String Quartet that have been played by such acclaimed groups as the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, The Virgina Symphony Orchestra and the Aizuri String Quartet. She is a regular visiting artist at the Berklee College of Music and has had a number of instructional books published by Hal Leonard and 80 days publishing. Gilchrist has released a number of albums to her name as well as being a featured soloist on the Dreamworks blockbuster movie soundtrack, “How to tame your dragon: The hidden world.” Her most recent album, “The Harpweaver,” has garnered international acclaim including a five-star review from the Irish Times who described it as “buoyant, sprightly and utterly beguiling.... a snapshot of a musician at the top of her game.” 

Gilchrist is the artistic director of the Rockport Celtic Music festival, an innovative new festival focused on cross-curation and the outer-fringes of Celtic Music.