Christopher Tyler Nickel

A prolific creator of film and television music, composer Christopher Tyler Nickel also works extensively in traditional classical genres. His music has been performed by ensembles in Canada and the U.S. Tyler Nickel was born in 1978 and grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He attended the University of British Columbia School of Music, where he studied with composer Stephen Chatman and graduated with a composition degree. Tyler Nickel went on for further studies in New York and Los Angeles. By 2002, his music was in circulation among North American orchestras; his Fanfare for Freedom was performed for an audience of 40,000 by the Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic Orchestra in 2002 and broadcast along the U.S. East Coast for Fourth of July celebrations that year. The work was later performed at an outdoor concert by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Tyler Nickel's film music career was also underway by then, and in 2004, he won an award for best action film score at the Park City Film Music Festival in Utah. In 2006, he contributed music to the video game Advent Rising, working with the Hollywood Studio Symphony at Paramount Studios. That year, he issued a solo album, Christopher Tyler Nickel, on a label bearing his own name. Tyler Nickel's music has been performed by numerous symphonic ensembles in Canada and the U.S., including the Atlanta Symphony, the Grand Rapids Symphony, and the Fraser Valley Symphony, as well as various university and youth groups and concert bands. The list of films and television shows for which he has composed music is long, including the Sci-Fi Channel, National Geographic, NBC, and the History Channel, among many others. Hundreds of hours of his music have been heard in these productions. One of his most successful works has been his Oboe Concerto (2012), which was recorded in 2020 by the Northwest Symphony Orchestra in Washington; he has also written a suite for oboe and orchestra and a bass oboe concerto. By the early 2020s, some 20 of Tyler Nickel's works had been recorded.
© James Manheim /TiVo