.png)
Evelin Seppar's new choral cycle: HumanNature
On 8 November 2025, The Carice Singers and their Conductor George Parris will give the world premiere performance of movements from HumanNature, a new cycle of choral works by Evelin Seppar. The performance will be at St Giles Cripplegate Church, marking The Carice Singers' debut performance at the Barbican Centre in London (click here to view the event page).
HumanNature, which sets poems by Jaan Kaplinski (one of Estonia's most famous writers), has been written especially for The Carice Singers, with support from the Cultural Endowment of Estonia. Its performance will form part of a wider focus on Estonian choral music under the auspices of Arvo Pärt's ninetieth birthday year.​​
Evelin Seppar's association with The Carice Singers began in 2022 when she visited the UK to work with us on her 2017 psalm setting Sie haben mich oft gedränget, which we then performed in both Oxford and London.
​
​
​
​
The Carice Singers' capability to sing convincingly in different languages (including Estonian) is astonishing. I’m very much looking forward to working with them again; it was an incredible experience how they could always meet my wishes and had the next gear in store. I haven’t experienced anything like that in the past.
"
"
Evelin Seppar
Evelin Seppar's music has been performed across Europe, and in China, Australia, and North America. With a particular love of writing for voices, she weaves together melodic lines of exquisite beauty, while creating harmonies that come from a deep understanding of choral sonorities.
​
Her soundworlds are firmly rooted in her closeness to nature - the coastline, forests, and marshlands of Northern Estonia - and bear the influence of those she studied with, including Rene Eespere, Toivo Tulev, and Ole Lützow-Holm.
​
Watch here - Evelin Seppar's Psalm 129, performed by the SWR Vokalensemble, directed by Yuval Weinberg.​​​
Evelin Seppar, in rehearsal with The Carice Singers in November 2022. Image: Nick Rutter
Evelin Seppar. Image: Sadu-Triste Juurikas
The combining element of Evelin Seppar's new work, HumanNature, is the poetry of Jaan Kaplinski (1941-2021), the Estonian writer, ecologist, politician, and essayist.
In Kaplinski's poems, which number nearly 2,000 in total, we find a constant questioning of self, often in relation to mankind's relationship to the natural world. As part of this, he observes and meditates on the most mundane things, such as the objects in his own backyard, while simultaneously searching for life's primal origins.
A trained linguist, Kaplinski was fascinated by how words and rhymes in different languages correlated to the flow of human experience. Seppar's multi-lingual HumanNature will reflect this, using Kaplinski's poems in Estonian and Võro (a language of Southern Estonia), as well poems translated into French and Swedish.​​
The sound of ecology
Jaan Kaplinski. Image: Jaan Tootsen
Movements from Evelin Seppar's HumanNature will be performed by The Carice Singers and their conductor George Parris on Saturday 8 November 2025 at St Giles Cripplegate, London. General booking opens on 16 April.​​
Project partners:
