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| George Parris & the Carice Singers (Photo: Lidia Crisafulli) |
Conductor George Parris and the Carice Singers have been exploring Arvo Pärt's music alongside that of other Estonian composers, most recently (13 November) at St Giles Cripplegate where they performed music by Arvo Pärt, Evelin Seppar and Galina Grigorjeva [see the review on TheArtsDesk website]. The choir was founded in 2011 by George Parris and named for Elgar's daughter. Their repertoire spreads widely, and whilst the music of Scandinavia and the Baltic looms large, George enjoys exploring further.
On 13 December 2025, they will be joining cellist Nicolas Altstaedt at Kings Place for An Ode to Our Planet as part of the Earth Unwrapped season. The concert features Bach's unaccompanied cello suites, two new pieces for cello and choir by French-British composer Josephine Stephenson, and Spanish composer Raquel García-Tomás, and two unaccompanied works by Ben Nobuto and Dobrinka Tabakova.
After the pandemic, George wanted the group to become more collaborative so the idea to perform with cellist Nicolas Altstaedt was most welcome. The idea for the concert originally came from Helen Wallace, the previous artistic director at King's Place, who was herself a cellist. The concert features new music for choir and cello, which is something they were looking to do. Josephine Stephenson’s work, Fire, river, garden, which has been commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society, will be a world premiere. Raquel Garcia-Tomas’s work, Vols brisés , which has been commissioned by Palau de la Musica Catalana and Kings Place, will be the UK premiere. Vols brisés was premiered in May this year by Nicolas Altstaedt with Cor de Cambra del Palau and Júlia Sesé at the Palau de la Música in Barcelona.
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| George Parris and the Carice Singers at the Cheltenham Music Festival, 2021 |
Ben Nobuto's work Sol, for eight unaccompanied solo voices and written in 2022 for the National Youth Choir Fellowship, is a playful ode to the sun and the energy that sustains life, while Dobrinka Tabakova’s Turn our Captivity, O Lord, which was written for The Sixteen, offers a serene plea for renewal and hope.
When it comes to contemporary music, George loves working with composers who push boundaries and challenge themselves, who are up for experimentation and play. He likes composers to be free and unpredictable. But the choir's work in educational schemes informs the choice of composer too. For the last four years, George and the Carice Singers have been involved in the composers academy at the Cheltenham Music Festival. They workshop the composers' pieces, which gives them an opportunity to build relationships with composers and go on to commission works.George also looks for composers who will fit alongside the choir's other projects. For instance, they have commissioned Alex Groves for a piece which will feature alongside the choir's Michael Tippett project. Groves' work is inspired by the sculptor Barbara Hepworth which provides a fine link to Tippett. In 2026 George and the choir will record Tippett's unaccompanied choral music for Signum Records, for release in November 2026. Then in 2027 they will be touring the programme alongside Alex Groves' new piece.
There is about a CD's worth of Tippett's unaccompanied choral music and George describes all the pieces as gems. He thinks that it is wonderful to see a revival of Tippett's orchestral and operatic output, but he does not want to see the choral music left behind. George describes Tippett's choice of texts as fantastic and the Tippett project has been one that George has long desired to do.
When it comes to assembling programmes, George tends to feel them in an instinctive way, looking for stories in the texts or in biographical details. This helps him find a poweful way to present music that on the page might look as if it does not fit together. He likes to think of the audience taking a psychological journey through the concert, whilst programmes need all sorts of different sounds and stimuluses in them. When in the planning stage he lets his imagination run, creating different versions of a programme so that he can see what works for him.
For their Arvo Pärt season this autumn, George programmed as much of Pärt's music as possible from his important pre-tintinabuli work, When Sara was 90 years old, to one of his most recent, Holy Father Nicholas. But the idea of including works by other Estonian composers alongside that of Pärt was to show different voices in Estonian music. Though George admits that there was an element of curiosity too, to find out what this music was like.
One of the reason's for the choir's focus on music from Scandinavia and the Baltic is that George studied and lived in Finland for four years (from the ages of 24 to 28). He describes this as a very impressionable time for him, with lots of musical events in Scandinavia and the Baltic being very accessible. He found Baltic music-making to be transfixing, and in concerts he is deliberately trying to recreate that magic and commitment in contemporary music. With his choir, George has a vision of putting choral music at the centre of contemporary culture, seeing how rich it is and how people benefit.
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| George Parris and the Carice Singers |
On 22 November 2025, George and the Carice Singers made their debut at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival with Baltic Sounds, giving the UK premieres of music by Lithuanian composer Žibuoklė Martinaitytė, and Finnish composers Perttu Haapanen, Lotta Wennäkoski and Joel Järventausta, along with Arvo Pärt. George describes the Festival as an amazing place to present his music. The programme was curated with the festival's artistic director, Graham Mackenzie. Programming Arvo Pärt's experimental, early Sarah was Ninety Years Old and his major work, The Beatitudes is a way of celebrating his 90th birthday. Žibuoklė Martinaitytė began composing Aletheia (2022), just as Russian troops had crossed into Ukraine, whilst Perttu Haapanen's Readymade Alice and Joel Järventausta' There will come soft rain were recommended to George by Graham Mackenzie and he finds them inspiring and imaginative. Completing the programme was Valossa by Lotta Wennäkoski, one of the most prolific Finnish composers. George describes the programme as a showcase for music the choir loves, by composers whom George knows personnally.
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