Christopher Tyler Nickel: Stabat Mater; Magnificat; A cappella Motets; Accompanied Motets; De profundis. Catherine Redding, soprano; Vancouver Chamber Choir and Vancouver Contemporary Orchestra conducted by Clyde Mitchell. AVIE. $19.99.
My Brother’s Keeper: A Musical Portrait of Black Brotherhood. New York Festival of Song. NYFOS Records. $20.
Self-limited by design but musically involving enough to have the potential to be of interest beyond their core audience, the liturgical works of Christopher Tyler Nickel (born 1978) have an element of reaching out in their very conception: Nickel is Protestant but sets traditional Catholic texts that, in his view, have communicative potential beyond their original purposes. Nickel is far from alone in this thought: despite Bach’s Lutheran faith, one of his greatest achievements is grounded in Catholicism – his Mass in B minor. Nickel has a way of reimagining, if not exactly reinterpreting, the sacred, and his Stabat Mater (2021) is a particularly good example of how he does so. The text meditates on Mary’s suffering when Christ is crucified, and traditionally uses choral forces to show how one woman’s anguish reaches out to all. Nickel turns this around, setting the text for a single soprano without chorus – and using unusual instrumentation (strings and four oboes: standard oboe, oboe d’amore, bass oboe and English horn). The winds’ range is close to that of the human voice, and there is a level of melancholy inherent in the sounds that oboes produce, so the instrumental backup reinforces and subtly accentuates the words, which Catherine Redding sings very movingly. She is abetted by Clyde Mitchell and the Vancouver Contemporary Orchestra, whose members handle Nickel’s work with the same care and engagement they have brought to it in previous AVIE releases. The Stabat Mater opens this disc and the Magnificat, in some ways its emotional opposite, closes it. Although this Magnificat (2024) is less overtly celebratory and somewhat more restrained than famous examples from the past, it is brightly proclamatory in its own way and makes very good use of significantly larger forces than Nickel employs for the Stabat Mater: the Magnificat uses choral forces (the clear-voiced 17-member Vancouver Chamber Choir), strings, two oboes, bass oboe, heckelphone, four French horns, and tuba. Between the Stabat Mater opening and the Magnificat conclusion are shorter works created and performed with equal care. There are two A cappella Motets and four Accompanied Motets (2024) that were not written to form a set (or two sets) but that, when performed as one (or two), showcase the differing ways in which Nickel hews to liturgical traditions or modifies them for expressive purposes. The motets’ moods run the gamut from austerity (Kyrie, an adaptation from Nickel’s Requiem) to affirmative brightness (O magnum mysterium). Also on this disc, and of particular interest, is De profundis, the Latin version of Psalm 130 (“Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord”), which in Nickel’s 2021 version is set as chamber music: it uses the same forces as the Stabat Mater except for replacing the orchestral strings with two cellos, thus producing a level of intimacy that goes well with the plaintive nature of the text. By their very nature, Nickel’s sacred works are intended for audiences steeped in traditional expressions of religious faith, specifically those of Christianity. But the musicality of Nickel’s pieces, and his willingness to follow the generally well-known words’ underlying emotions in directions not always taken by prior composers utilizing the same texts, produce pieces that connect on levels beyond their surface: none of these works will likely result in anyone’s conversion to a particular belief system, but all of them show ways in which a specific form of spirituality can reach beyond itself to touch listeners who do not necessarily share its precepts.
The desired audience for a new NYFOS Records release turns out to be narrower than the one to which Nickel’s sacred music reaches out, even though the composers represented on the CD are more diverse. Blacks are the expected and wished-for listeners here. Black men, in particular, are the target, reflecting the gender and skin color of the seven-member ensemble presenting the material: Steven Blier, Joshua Blue, Will Liverman, Joseph Parrish, Alan Williams, Jorell Williams, and Chaz’men Williams-Ali. The group members show their musicality in multiple roles, sometimes singing and sometimes as pianists/accompanists. Vocally, Blue and Williams-Ali are tenors; Liverman, Parrish and Jorell Williams are baritones; and Alan Williams is a bass-baritone. Liverman both sings and plays piano on one track, his own arrangement of Some Enchanted Evening by Rodgers and Hammerstein – an approach that underlines that of the CD as a whole, in which older material is rearranged or repurposed to fit the ensemble’s setting and messaging, then juxtaposed with more-recent music. Brahms’ song Die Schwestern (“The Sisters”) is an especially clear example of how the entire New York Festival of Song disc is conceived, here being recast as Die Brüder while retaining its words about closely bonded siblings who find themselves conflicted by their attraction to the same person. Blackness and gender are kept in the forefront not only on this track but also throughout the (+++) recording, which quite intentionally excludes listeners who are physically different from the performers. As for the music, it includes Three Dream Portraits by Margaret Bonds, Huddie Ledbetter’s Sylvie, William Grant Still’s A Black Pierrot, works by ensemble member Jorell Williams (Americana and Hold Fast to Dreams), and several arrangements designed to showcase both the group’s voices and those of its individual members. Contemporary composers often put a sociopolitical stamp on their works, requiring audiences to learn about and hopefully agree with a specific stance in order to get the full benefit of the music. This disc, under the title My Brother’s Keeper, does the same thing from the perspective and viewpoint of the performers rather than the composers – whose pieces are modified to fit the ensemble’s interests if they do not already do so. There is some well-sung material here and some good music-making, but in many ways that is not the point of the CD. It is a “cause” recording, whose makers would presumably be happy if the music enlisted new members to their interests – but which, on the face of it, is intended only to welcome listeners who are already members of the group for which the entire project was designed.
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