Nickel: Music for Woodwind Choirs (2025 Remaster) Sarah Jackson, Roger Cole, Karin Walsh, Beth Orson, Clyde Mitchell

• Christopher Tyler Nickel (b. 1978): Suite for Two Oboes and Two Cors Anglais:
• 1 Nickel: Suite for Two Oboes and Two Cors Anglais: I. Kyrie (2025 Remaster) 04:29
• 2 Nickel: Suite for Two Oboes and Two Cors Anglais: II. Dies Irae (2025 Remaster) 04:50
• 3 Nickel: Suite for Two Oboes and Two Cors Anglais: III. Lacrimosa (2025 Remaster) 03:21
• 4 Nickel: Suite for Two Oboes and Two Cors Anglais: IV. Gloria (2025 Remaster) 02:40
• Symphony for Flute Choir:
• 5 Nickel: Symphony for Flute Choir: Movement I (2025 Remaster) 12:11
• 6 Nickel: Symphony for Flute Choir: Movement II (2025 Remaster) 05:33
• 7 Nickel: Symphony for Flute Choir: Movement III (2025 Remaster) 07:14
• 8 Nickel: Symphony for Flute Choir: Movement IV (2025 Remaster) 09:56
• Total Runtime 50:14

Info for Nickel: Music for Woodwind Choirs (2025 Remaster)

Canadian composer Christopher Tyler Nickel’s penchant for imaginative combinations of instruments translates to his latest release, Music for Woodwind Choirs, which includes “Suite for Two Oboes and Two Cors Anglais”, and “Symphony for Flute Choir”.lineAward-winning Canadian composer Christopher Tyler Nickel’s penchant for imaginative combinations of instruments translates to his latest AVIE release, Music for Woodwind Choirs. Each movement of the “Suite for Two Oboes and Two Cors Anglais”, takes its title from four prayers in the Christian liturgy – Kyrie, Dies Irae, Lacrimosa, Gloria – each one an abstract representation of the overall spirit and sentiment of these devotions.

Christopher’s “Symphony for Flute Choir” is a larger scale work for four flutes, plus piccolo, alto and bass flutes, that embodies an emotional breadth on a symphonic scale.lineThe Suite for Two Oboes and Two Cors Anglais (2017), consists of four movements that take their titles from the Christian liturgy. Each movement is an abstract representation of the overall spirit and emotion of each of these prayers. The movements consist of what I find to be four of the most poignant as well as contrasting of the prayers: the Kyrie, the Dies Irae, the Lacrimosa, and ending with the Gloria. Having played the oboe and English horn throughout my formative musical years through to my completion of university, I have an inherent love for these instruments and writing for them. Oboists lack a large selection of serious repertoire for choirs of their instruments and my hope is that this piece will help fill some of that need in additional to encouraging others to write for this fascinating timbral combination.

The Symphony for Flute Choir (2017) is a larger scale work for standard flute choir consisting of four movements. In composing this piece, my goal was to give the flute choir a serious piece of music with the emotional breadth that comes in writing a piece of a symphonic scale. As with most of my music, there is no programme or narrative to this piece. Rather, the movements revolve around often angular ideas, many mixed asymmetric metres, and contrasts between slow, sometimes emotionally ambivalent sections and more driving and jagged movements of ever-increasing amounts of tension.

Sarah Jackson, piccolo
Roger Cole, oboe
Karin Walsh, oboe
Beth Orson, Cors Anglais
Erin Marks, Cors Anglais
Christie Reside, flute
Rosanne Wieringa, flute
Laura Vanek, flute
Paul Hung, flute
Anne-Elise Keefer, alto flute
Paolo Bortolussi, bass flute
Clyde Mitchell, conductor

Digitally remastered

Sarah Jackson
has held the position of Piccolo for the Los Angeles Philharmonic since 2003. Prior to this, in 1993, she joined the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (British Columbia, Canada) as Second Flute, later moving on to take the position of Assistant Principal Flute and Piccolo with the VSO.

Sarah received her Bachelor of Music Degree in Flute Performance from the University of British Columbia. In addition to taking private voice lessons, she specialized in flute, studying with Camille Churchfield, former Principal Flute with the VSO. She also attended McGill University in Montreal for Graduate Studies with Timothy Hutchins, Principal Flute of the Montreal Symphony, and while studying there, auditioned for and won her first professional position as Second Flute with the VSO.

Sarah also taught flute and piccolo at the University of British Columbia. As a much sought-after piccolo and flute teacher, she has been attracting students from around the world, and she is currently teaching piccolo at USC in California. She has taught, led masterclasses, and performed recitals in Italy, Japan, France, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, Belgium, Netherlands, Venezuela, Hong Kong, Canada, and the United States. Sarah is also an active chamber musician, soloist, clinician, and freelance artist and has played for numerous films, albums, and TV and radio broadcasts.

Roger Cole
was appointed Principal Oboist of the Vancouver Symphony by Maestro Kazuyoshi Akiyama in 1976. At age 22 he was the youngest principal player of the VSO. Today he is the oldest principal player. From 1976-2008 he was also the principal oboist of the CBC Radio Orchestra.

Mr. Cole received his early musical training in Seattle, Washington and went on to become a scholarship student at Yale University and The Juilliard School where he studied with the renowned American oboist, Robert Bloom.

Mr. Cole has participated in the summer music festivals of Aspen, Tanglewood, and Marlboro. He has recently taught, conducted and performed at the Marrowstone Music Festival (Bellingham, Wa.) and the PRISMA Music Festival (Powell River, BC).

He performs regularly in solo and chamber music recitals and has appeared as soloist with the VSO and the CBC Vancouver Orchestra many times. He has recorded a CD for CBC Records with his VSO colleague, pianist Linda Lee Thomas entitled "The Expressive Oboe".

Mr. Cole teaches at the University of British Columbia, the Vancouver Academy of Music and the VSO School of Music He has given master class across N. America and in Asia. He also has an active oboe studio at his home in N. Vancouver.

In June 2003 Mr. Cole was named Music Director and Senior Orchestra Conductor of the Vancouver Youth Symphony Orchestra. Under his guidance the VYSO has flourished and is considered one of the finest Youth Orchestras in Canada. The VYSO has performed many times along side the VSO under Maestro Bramwell Tovey.

From 1998-2012 he was the principal oboist of the Carmel Bach Festival in California.

Karin Walsh
has played Second Oboe in the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra since 2006. From 2006-2008 she also played in the CBC Radio Orchestra.

Born in Vancouver, Karin was fortunate to study with Beth Orson from the VSO. Karin played in the Vancouver Youth Symphony Orchestra and the Vancouver Academy of Music Orchestra for many years, as well as the National Youth Orchestra of Canada.

Karin is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where she received her Bachelor of Music. During that time, she studied with John Ferrillo and Keisuke Wakao of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Karin is happy and grateful to be back home in Vancouver, and looks forward to continuing her musical growth as a member of the VSO.

Beth Orson
has played Assistant Principal Oboe and English Horn with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra since 1989. She joined the faculty at the UBC School of Music in 1993 and has served as Oboe Coach at the National Youth Orchestra of Canada since 2008. As a chamber musician, Ms. Orson appears regularly with the VSO Chamber Players, Trio Con Brio, and in recital at both UBC and at NYO. Principal Oboe of the NY Symphonic Ensemble from 1988-2005, Ms. Orson completed 19 tours to Japan with this renowned chamber orchestra, performing in every major concert hall in Japan, often as oboe soloist.

As an English horn player Ms. Orson’s solo performances with orchestra include the US and Canadian premieres of Bramwell Tovey’s “The Progress of Vanity” composed for her; Christopher Nickel’s EP “Tranquility,” Rodney Sharman’s “Songs Without Words,” the North American premiere of James MacMillan's "The World's Ransoming,” the Ferlandis-Kraus Concerto for English horn, Copland’s “Quiet City,” as well as numerous performances of Sibelius’s “The Swan of Tuonela.” Ms. Orson can also be heard playing both solo oboe and English horn on Jeffrey Ryan’s CD “My Soul Upon My Lips.” A graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory and winner of the Oberlin Concerto Competition, Ms. Orson's principal teachers were Laurence Thorstenberg, James Caldwell, and Elaine Douvas. Before moving to Vancouver, she worked as a freelance musician in New York City where she regularly performed with the orchestras of the Metropolitan & New York City Operas, the Orchestra of St.Luke’s, Philharmonia Virtuosi, and on Broadway.

Clyde Mitchell
is Founding Music Director of Lions Gate Sinfonia, the professional orchestra of Vancouver’s beautiful North Shore. He has also created the growing Lions Gate Youth Orchestra.

After a Bachelor of Music from Louisiana State University and a Master of Arts from California State University, Northridge, Clyde had a fine career as a professional hornist. He played Principal Horn in the Orquesta Sinfónica de Colombia in Bogotá and the Tucson Symphony in Arizona. He then served as Associate Principal Horn in the prestigious Montreal Symphony under Charles Dutoit and taught at McGill University in Montreal.

Returning to university to study conducting, Clyde received a Master’s Degree from CSU-Long Beach and an Artist’s Diploma from the highly respected University of Southern California under esteemed conducting professor Daniel Lewis. Mitchell returned to Canada as conductor of several youth and amateur orchestras in Ontario before winning the position of Resident and Associate Conductor of the Vancouver Symphony, a position he held for nine years. He then followed his dream of creating a new orchestra; with the help of many followers and lovers of classical music on Vancouver’s beautiful North Shore, Lions Gate Sinfonia was born in 2000! Clyde enjoys a busy guest-conducting career with the orchestras of Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, Victoria and Hamilton, and Ottawa’s National Arts Centre Orchestra. He has also conducted in the United States, Asia, South America, and Europe.

Clyde continues to be an enthusiastic promoter of music education, as well as of Canadian composers and soloists. He frequently works as a clinician and teacher for youth orchestras and bands across the country. A fun extra career sees Clyde as a speaker and host for radio and TV shows about classical music, including MASTERWORKS on the Knowledge Network. He divides his time between Vancouver and Los Angeles, where his wife Sarah Jackson is Solo Piccolo for the LA Philharmonic.

Clyde’s recent guest-conducting experiences include Honour Orchestras in several states in the U.S., the KotorArt Festival (Montenegro), the North Czech Philharmonic Teplice, the Transylvania State Philharmonic (Cluj-Napoca, Romania), the Funabashi City Symphony Orchestra (Chiba, Japan), the Chiba Festival Honour Orchestra, and over a dozen orchestras in China.

Booklet for Nickel: Music for Woodwind Choirs (2025 Remaster)