“Haunting yet quietly rigorous… Often there seems to be more breath than voice in these wordless poems, though other times Ms. Chaker draws full-bellied sounds, or sketches out silvery arpeggios.”

—Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, New York Times

DAWNING

Co-commissioned by New York Philharmonic & Nebraska Crossroads Music Festival & Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra, Dawning is a musical love letter to the new souls who have joined us earthside amid our trying times. Resilient seedlings sprouting from the cracks of leaden landscapes, symbolizing the enduring spirit of life and the promise of a new dawn.

It's a testament to the human capacity to create and nurture life, even in the face of adversities, and a poignant reminder that even in the darkest of times, there is room for joy, love, and the promise of a brighter future

Stemming from the many lullabies we have been singing to our son for the past three years, and which have become the leitmotivs to our lives, Dawning unfolds in four movements: Dusk, Oxytocin, In-descence, and Nightfall. The movements pour into one another like a dance between joy and exhaustion, primal, uncontainable love and anxiety, laughter and tears, chaos and tranquility.

"Emerging out of nothingness," as the score mentions it, Dusk rises to a mist of uncertainty that gradually dissi-pates, erupting in a moment of indeterminate euphoria in Oxytocin, alluding to the love hormone that submerges the psyche of parents in their early days. The subtle leitmotivs become increasingly evident in the second part of the piece. We encounter celebratory and lively iterations of the aforementioned lullabies in Iridescence, which ultimately gradually dissolve into the final movement, Nightfall, a cathartic release of weariness and serenity.

As performer-composers, collaborating on a composition is already a rare occurrence, but co-compos-ing with your life partner is even more extraordinary. In our first time embarking on such an exercise, we allowed the lived experience to overlap, inform. and intertwine with the compositional process itself, making way for a musical creation resulting from our shared life's creation. A common contemplation on the human journey we are on together, made with the ever-changing colors of sleepless nights and new daily discoveries, time, energy, and love, and a certain amount of musical and practical improvisation that are deemed necessary for any new parents.

Dawning utilizes quotes from Ya Sheikh el Bakri and Hal Sissan, lullabies from the popular Levantine Arabic repertoire.

DID YOU KNOW?

• Layale Chaker’s double concerto for Violin & Clarinet, Dawning, was premiered in October 2023 with the New York Philharmonic

• Chaker’s first full-length opera, Ruinous Gods, was premiered at the Spoleto Festival in May 2024.

• 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.

• Chaker is the winner of the 2017 Ruth Anderson Competition; 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.

• LAYALE CHAKER + SECOND SOLOISTS TBD

• flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, vibraphone, bass drum, tubular bells, and strings.