I've listened to classical music for as long as I can remember. It all started with Beethoven - my parents would put on one of his piano concertos or symphonies when they put me and my brother to sleep each night. Lying in our bunk beds, we'd close our eyes and find comfort in the pieces we heard over and over. Naturally, I thought Beethoven was the end all, be all of classical music.

That is, until I heard Sibelius' 5th Symphony. My wife is a musician in an orchestra and suggested I listen to this piece that she was performing later that week. It was a cold winter morning in Stockholm, and I walked to work through trenches dug in the deep snow and listened to Sibelius for the first time. As the sun slowly peeked over the horizon, illuminating the frozen waterfront, Sibelius seemed to be speaking to me. In the same way that Beethoven captured the fields, hills, forests, and mountains of Germany, Sibelius (whom I like to call the Beethoven of Scandinavia) captured the frozen land, dark mornings, and long shadows of winter in the north.

So how did I go from Sibelius to Sibwhaleius? Well, in addition to quirky t-shirts, I like to collect fun socks. I was going to see my wife perform Sibelius's 2nd Symphony and was looking for a pair of socks to match the occasion. Although I don't have any musical themed socks, I noticed a pair of socks with whales on them, and the underwater character of Sibwhaleius popped into my head. When this garnered hysterical laughter from my wife, I knew Sibwhaleius was destined to end up on a t-shirt.