“Vigil” is the collaboration between ETHEL and Layale Chaker, a composer and violinist whose work explores themes of beauty, displacement, musical form throughout time, and world politics. Together, the quintet composes and performs one another’s work with vigor and brilliance. The centerpiece of their recorded eponymous work is Ms. Chaker’s five-movement suite. About the genesis of this work, she writes:
“The drive behind “Vigil” was born out of a visceral need to react, express and articulate thoughts and emotions that overcame me during the first weeks after the start of the October 2019 revolution in Lebanon.
This revolution, born out of decades and decades of systematic oppression, left me paralyzed for months, unwilling and unable to write any music. It soon appeared to me that this paralysis had been a constant state in which I, and many of us, find refuge, in an attempt to go on with our lives as normally as possible in an increasingly unjust and hostile world.
Through this piece I come back to anger, willingly. I embrace it, not as a destructive force, but as a means of self-determination. The piece is an ode to those who flood the streets with courage in all corners of the world, and an ode to the resilience we all carry within us.
This is a call for hope, for thoughtful action, and for deeper listening.”
Together, ETHEL and Layale Chaker offer a concert full of virtuosity and determination, a sound that uplifts, reflects, and channels the frustration of modern humanity through the release of beautiful musical ideas.
