Lions Gate Sinfonia to debut new Requiem
Organization will perform major work as it gears up for its silver anniversary
The weeks leading up to Easter often feature choral music of a spiritual, serious nature. This March, a concert by the Lions Gate Sinfonia will include the first performance of a new Requiem by Vancouver composer Christopher Tyler Nickel, featuring the ensemble, the Vancouver Chamber Choir, and soprano Catherine Redding, all under the baton of LGS founder and music director Clyde Mitchell.
Sinfonia is poised to celebrate its silver anniversary in 2025, and what better way to gear up for that auspicious birthday than with a major work by the Sinfonia's composer-in-residence?
The presentation of a 70-minute work demonstrates the ambition and vision of all involved. The Lions Gate Sinfonia is a small organization operating on a tight budget, but nonetheless they are ready to lavish time and energy on a project that might well scare off some of our more conventional organizations. Nickel is very much a Vancouver product.
“I was an oboe student with Roger Cole, then studied until 2001 with Stephen Chatman at UBC. I've always had a foot in both worlds, the classical world and the commercial world,” he told me in an interview last week.
Nickel scored student films at UBC, then eased into the world of film and TV scores, including providing music for the long-running series Highway Thru Hell.
“I consider myself really blessed because we're going into the 13th season of Highway, though I never have time for a holiday.”
Working in this high-pressure environment isn't for everyone.
“Being a composer is great because you can choose your own hours — as long as you choose all of them!” Nickel said
“A huge part of being a commercial composer is that it's less about what you write, it's how you adjust to the work life. The pressure in working for Disney is a million times the pressure of working for Discovery Channel Canada. In television the deadlines are so tight that there isn't much time to think.”
Even so, Nickel still finds time for concert music. How does he find the energy and inspiration to produce works for the concert hall?
“I always tell people that I don't sleep. I'm efficient, and thankful for that. I do a lot of composing when the series aren't on.”
His latest project is by no means his first foray into music in the service of religious texts: a previous epic for Avie Records was a setting of the entire Gospel According to Mark, some seven CDs in all.
His new Requiem “uses the Latin text, complete with the Dies irae. At times the choir and instrumentalists have to play and sing as loud as they can, but there is still an intimacy to it. This is not a Requiem that sounds like a film score,” he says. “I try to bring out something fundamental in the old texts which can be appreciated by a secular audience.”
Like his St. Mark project, Nickel's new Requiem will travel far and wide thanks to Avie Records; yet it's also a major work by a successful hometown composer creating music for an audience he knows well.
“I grew up in Coquitlam, but Vancouver is my musical home, and the audience will include the people I grew up with.”
The Canadian debut of Ariel Lanyi features a major work reflecting the idea of serious, even spiritual, music for the concert hall: Max Reger's Variations and Fugue on a Theme of J.S. Bach. We don't hear a lot of Reger (18731916) here on the West Coast, but the German composer mated romantic era harmony, the contrapuntal idiom of Bach and the technical wizardry of Liszt.