The Glasshouse

From its beginnings at The Glasshouse to performances across the country, RNS Moves is bringing professional disabled and non-disabled musicians together to make music in new ways.

The ensemble brings together musicians from Royal Northern Sinfonia with disabled and non-disabled musicians, creating performances that can move between written music, improvisation and electronic sound. Its programmes might take in Bach, Purcell, Caroline Shaw, Arvo Pärt or Terry Riley, alongside new approaches to familiar music and collaborations with artists working across varied fields including Heloise Werner, Max Baillie and Tomas Hulenvik. That openness to different traditions has included a research and development collaboration with Kenyan singer, songwriter and nyatiti player Rapasa Nyatrapasa Otieno, exploring the eight-string lyre’s traditional storytelling roots alongside RNS Moves’ own instruments and approaches – work that led to performances at The Glasshouse and Middlesbrough Town Hall.

At the heart of RNS Moves is a simple idea – disabled musicians should be able to take part in professional music-making and help shape the work itself. And when they do, the music can become more interesting too.

Over the past year, RNS Moves has taken another big step forward. What began as an ensemble rooted at The Glasshouse is now performing beyond the North East, with London and Manchester debuts in 2025 and invitations to return. In September, the ensemble will return to Kings Place in London, with further performances planned in the North East.

Sam McShane, Artistic Director of Kings Place, said: “Working with RNS Moves has been, and continues to be, a hugely valuable for Kings Place. Their performances are imaginative and ambitious and have brought fresh perspectives to our programme while creating genuinely memorable experiences and inspiration to our audiences. The response to their 2025 performance was remarkable, with one audience member commenting ‘This was a uniquely special concert. I was intensely moved throughout.’

Our partnership has also helped inform our approach to accessibility and inclusive programming, influencing conversations across the organisation. We’re excited to be building on this relationship through future performances and new collaborative projects, and to continue learning from and working alongside such an inspiring ensemble.”

For Tristan Gurney, leader of RNS Moves, the ensemble has always been about more than just putting disabled and non-disabled musicians on the same stage.

That way of working has developed over time. RNS Moves originally worked with Candoco Dance Company, an inclusive dance company, to learn from its approach to working with disabled and non-disabled performers. That relationship has continued to shape the ensemble, including a recent collaboration at Wylam Brewery that brought live music and contemporary dance together for the first time since those early days.

As Tristan explains, Candoco’s approach to excellence was an important influence on the ensemble from the beginning:

“They’ve got a very simple mantra of excellence which attracted us to working with them because it’s what we were aiming to do – to create a chamber ensemble that provides excellent music-making.”

“We’ve grown more comfortable with different ways of making music. There are certain practices and techniques of playing that are very much out of the day-to-day comfort zone for full-time orchestral musicians.”

Alongside new commissions and contemporary work, recent programmes have brought together music from Bach to Philip Glass, with improvisation and new approaches to familiar pieces. The ensemble has also commissioned composers to write for RNS Moves, several of whom – including Kate Whitley, Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian and Joe Cutler – hadn’t previously written for an inclusive ensemble. Its upcoming programme at Kings Place spans more than 300 years of music, from Purcell and Mozart to Arvo Pärt and Glass. It’s a reflection of the breadth of the ensemble and the freedom it has to build programmes around its musicians and instruments.

Improvisation is one example. For musicians trained to follow a score, having much less on the music stand can be daunting. But it has become an important part of what RNS Moves does, alongside other techniques – memorisation, graphic scores and looping and sampling – that push against the usual conventions of orchestral playing.

“RNS Moves is such a creative process that there’s so much room for exploration in the performance and in the interpretation that the feeling of doing a concert is exhilarating,” Tristan says. “You’re not quite sure what’s going to happen, so you get quite a rush.”

That freedom has also allowed musicians to find new ways of making music, including through accessible instruments such as the LinnStrument, Clarion and Gestrument.

Clarence Adoo MBE is a key member of the ensemble. A former professional trumpet player with RNS, Clarence was paralysed in a car accident and has since developed new ways of making music, including using his electronic Headspace instrument.

Clarence’s Headspace instrument allows him to control sound through movements of his head and breath. But it’s also changing how the other musicians think about their own playing.

During one rehearsal, RNS trumpet player Marion realised she could follow Clarence’s breathing to help her respond musically to him.

“Actually, I’ve just realised I can also follow you because you do breathe, and I can see the little bit of the articulation going on.”

Clarence’s response captures something important about the way RNS Moves works:

“That’s very interesting for me to hear. Up until now, it’s always been, ‘Don’t worry, I can follow you.’ But it sounds like there are times where somebody could follow me now.”

That exchange is a small example of something much bigger. The ensemble is not simply adapting existing ways of working so that disabled musicians can take part. The musicians are learning from one another and changing the way they make music together.

Harpist Steph West sees that as one of the most exciting things about being part of RNS Moves.

Pianist Rachel Starritt says: “I’m really excited actually to be a part of this. I love being in a disabled community that’s integrated with other musicians so that we can understand ourselves better and how other people work. But with RNS Moves, I feel that we’re pushing boundaries, introducing improvisation and just really being ourselves as an ensemble.”

That sense of possibility is now extending to the next generation of musicians. The Glasshouse and the Royal Northern College of Music have also developed a Professional Experience Scheme for students who are d/Deaf, disabled and/or neurodivergent, or for whom working in a more inclusive way would be beneficial.

Professional experience schemes between conservatoires and orchestras are well established. What’s different here is that the students are joining an inclusive ensemble, giving disabled and neurodivergent musicians the chance to experience professional rehearsals and performances in a setting where inclusive music-making is part of everyday work.

Two RNCM students joined the ensemble for rehearsals and performances in Gateshead and Manchester, gaining experience of the professional rehearsal and performance environment as well as bringing their own perspectives and musical skills to the ensemble.

Manus Carey, Deputy Principal and Artistic Director at the Royal Northern College of Music said: “The RNS Moves Professional Experience Scheme has been such a positive addition to the opportunities offered at the RNCM. We are exceptionally proud of this relationship and the real-world professional connections it brings for our students.

A number of exciting conversations are now taking place around the RNCM, in consultation with Clarence Adoo and Tristan Gurney from RNS Moves, as we actively design enhanced ways to support, embrace and celebrate the abilities of our students in their ensemble music-making irrespective of any disclosed disability.”

Maria, one of the students on the Professional Experience Scheme, says:

“It was so musically and intellectually inspiring, and I would love to work with everyone involved again.

We also both really valued how our voices were heard, and the collective dialogue in the ensemble was so refreshing! The workshop aspect was great, and the fact that the Professional Experience Scheme is a residential makes it very unique, and a much more involved process than other schemes.”

The partnership is now continuing for a further two years, creating more opportunities for students to work alongside professional musicians and experience a different model of music-making.

Other young musicians have found their way to the ensemble too. Alessandro Vazzano, who recently premiered the first concerto written for the Clarion at BBC Proms with NOYO, came to observe RNS Moves rehearsals – a connection that grew out of conversations with NOYO about what its musicians might go on to do next – before joining the ensemble for one of its project weeks.

The work also extends beyond the professional stage. RNS Moves has performed for school audiences in Middlesbrough, with a further performance planned there next year, and Clarence recently visited Percy Hedley School, which provides specialist education for children and young people with complex physical disabilities and learning difficulties, to give a talk and workshop for students. The ensemble is also hoping to build links with Middlesbrough Open Orchestras, some of whose members attended its 2024 Middlesbrough performance.

For RNS Moves, the ambition is also growing, with performances now reaching further across the North East, including at Wylam Brewery and in Middlesbrough, alongside the return to Kings Place. More audiences are now getting the chance to experience RNS Moves beyond The Glasshouse.

That journey matters because RNS Moves is not only creating opportunities for individual musicians to perform a given programme. It’s showing what can happen when disabled musicians are given the opportunity to shape the artistic work itself.

“There’s a powerful vision for RNS Moves that propels us that bit further each time. We’re always trying new things and pioneering new ways of working.” says Tristan

Reflecting on his return to professional music-making, Clarence says:

“It’s something that nobody could have predicted when I was in intensive care with machines keeping me alive, that I would get back to playing on stage doing music with those guys. It’s a dream, a dream on top of a dream.”

RNS Moves is not just demonstrating that inclusive music-making is possible; it’s making people rethink what an ensemble can be.