Life Is Art Is Motherhood Is Art: Mother Artist Salon with Layale Chaker and Maeve Gilchrist
7 – 8:30PM
Please join on July 24, 2025, from 7 to 9 pm for an Artist Salon featuring live music and conversation with Layale Chaker (violin) and Maeve Gilchrist (harp), two artists who balance active tour schedules with the demands of caring for their young children. Admission is free, and no RSVP is required. Families with children are welcome!
The event is one of a series of Mother Artist Salons being held in conjunction with the exhibition Life Is Art Is Motherhood Is Art. Check the exhibition announcement or CRS calendar for details.
ABOUT THE PROGRAM
Chaker and Gilchrist come together in an exploration of the threads that stitch our inherited worlds—the whispers of old tales passed down by grandmothers, the shadowed weight of mythologies, superstitions, and lullabies, scattered across time and distance.
Drawing from the musical vocabularies of their respective lineages—Celtic and Levantine—this new duo traces melodic and rhythmical contours shaped by centuries of oral memory. They search for the places where their stories overlap: fields of exile, haunted lands, and songs that carry coded truths.
This is not a reimagining of the past, but an exploration of a shared present—an exploration of what flows through us unseen, like smoke through veins. This suite of music invites the audience to step into a newly formed world, rooted in the past but written for the present day—a brand new mythology.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Life Is Art Is Motherhood Is Art is an exhibition of five artists who are mothers of different generations — Daniela Kostova (Bulgaria), Aline Müller (Brazil), Quynh “Alex” Nguyễn (Vietnam), Katie Heller Saltoun (USA), and Satomi Shirai (Japan). Curated by CRS co-founder Christopher Pelham, the exhibition will be on view at Tenri Cultural Institute of New York from July 21 – 26, 2025.
“Being an artist is to experience a vigorous, experimental life of the mind and of the senses. Parenthood is another enriching experience: primal, haptic and life-affirming. Why are the two still seen as incompatible?” — Jeffrey Boloten and Juliet Hacking, Forward to How Not to Exclude Artist Mothers (and other parents)
This exhibition highlights the inspiring works being created worldwide by mother artists and examines the multifaceted relationship between motherhood and art-making. Through their diverse photography and 2D works, we invite you to consider the challenges that working mother artists face and reflect on motherhood and child-rearing as fundamentally creative acts, inseparably intertwined with art-making, deserving of our loving attention, respect, and support. Learn more…
EXHIBITION HOURS
Monday, July 21 – July 26, 2025 (closed July 25)
Mon – Thu 12 – 6 pm, Sat 12 – 3 pm
TENRI GALLERY LOCATION
Tenri Cultural Institute of New York, 43A W 13th St, New York, NY 10011
212.645.2800
ABOUT THE MUSICAL ARTISTS
LAYALE CHAKER, violinist, singer and composer
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 the 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.
“Haunting yet quietly rigorous…” — The New York Times
MAEVE GILCHRIST, harpist, singer, composer and producer
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, Maeve tours internationally as a solo artist and composer. She is a member of the Grammy-winning Silkroad ensemble and of 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, Maeve straddles the worlds of folk and classical music with pieces that include 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 Virginia Symphony Orchestra, and the Aizuri String Quartet. She is a regular visiting artist at Berklee College of Music and has had several instructional books published by Hal Leonard and 80 Days Publishing. Maeve has released a number of albums under her name and is a featured soloist on the Dreamworks blockbuster movie soundtrack, “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World.” Her most recent album, “The Harpweaver,” has garnered international acclaim, including a five-star review from the Irish Times, which described it as “buoyant, sprightly and utterly beguiling….a snapshot of a musician at the top of her game.” Maeve is the Artistic Director of the Rockport Celtic Festival, an innovative new festival focused on cross-curation and the outer fringes of Celtic music.
“Both Fascinating and Absorbing in equal measure, an Original Voice” — Scotsman