For those unaware, vast, deep and emotional are apt descriptions of the single-movement, 53-minute-long Symphony No. 2 by Christopher Tyler Nickel.

The award-winning Canadian composer elaborates: One can think of this music as consisting of mirrors between ideas that equally disturb yet entice.

Each side of the reflection is in itself conceivably valid, but when facing each other friction and dissonance are created. The exquisitely alluring and the grotesque exist simultaneously.

Perhaps another way to understand the symphony is as a meditation on the state of cognitive dissonance.

CHRISTOPHER TYLER NICKEL (b. 1978)
Symphony No. 2 (2016, rev. 2018)
1. I. Grave Andante Grave Mysterioso Fatalistically Grave
Total time: 53.00.

Recorded on November 5th, 2019 at St. Thomas Chapel at Bastyr University, Kenmore, Washington, USA, the entrepreneurial Clyde Mitchell conducts the Seattle-based Northwest Sinfonia on this simply breathtaking, heart-poundingly euphoric one minute, ornately passionate and endearing the next, world-premiere recording.

Throughout the cinematic vastness of this 53 minute, deeply emotional and heartily visceral offering, each movement made within is just pure, unadulterated gossamer and lays down a thistledown bed of generous musical proportion for the listener from the very beginning.

Christopher Tyler Nickels contemporary classical compositions pack a bracing and emotional punch. His award-winning works for the concert hall, stage and screen have been heard in over 160 countries by audiences in the tens of thousands.

His experience as an oboist instils a confidence to compose with an exhilarating freedom to explore the vast expressive range of the instrument, from lyrical and plaintive to acerbic and brittle.

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