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 2026 USA Artist Fellow, and 2020-2022 Jerome Hill Fellow, Chaker is also recipient of the 2022 Opera America Discovery Award, among many other accolades.

Layale has recently premiered a commissioned evening-length work, Qarar/Jawab at the Venice Biennale, and the world premiere of her double concerto, "Dawning", alongside Kinan Azmeh, for clarinet, violin and orchestra, co-commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, Nebraska Crossroads Music Festival and Lincoln 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, and will see its European premiere at the Barbican in London in May 2027. 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 also marked 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 also recently completed a year-long residency at WQXR 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, Aldeburgh 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 #1 on NPR’s 10 Best Releases, lived at #1 for several weeks on Amazon Music, and received rave reviews by 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 started 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 currently working towards her doctorate in music composition at Princeton University.