Layale Chaker

Described as a “rising star” by BBC Music Magazine and praised for her “dazzling playing rich of countless colors”, Layale Chaker has performed at National Sawdust, London Jazz Festival, Bimhuis, Alderburgh Festival, the Lucerne Festival for Contemporary Music, Abbaye de Royaumont, Festival Villes des Musiques du Monde, Impuls’ Festival, Beethoven Festival Bonn and Avignon Festival, appearing as a soloist, performer, improviser and composer.

This season's highlights include a commission from Newlands Festival for a collaboration with Holland Baroque, the Diaphonique 2018 Franco-British Commission Fund, along with London-based Notes Inegales ensemble and musicians of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, for the creation of a new work. Layale has also received commissions from the Oxford Orchestra and the New World Symphony. Her compositions were described by the Osnabrucker Zeitung as “pervaded by the melancholy and the intensity of Fado...Incredible energy.”

Trained at the National Higher Conservatory for Music in Lebanon, Conservatoire de Paris and the Royal Academy of Music in London, Layale Chaker is a Ruth Anderson 2017 Competition Prize winner, a Prix Nadia et Lili Boulanger 2018 winner, the recipient of the Royal Academy of Music's 2018 Guinness Award, and a finalist of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé 2018 Prize.