ABIGAIL TOLAND creative director
Abigail, a co-founder of Second Movement, is the company’s creative director and a trustee. She created rough for opera, Second Movement’s groundbreaking platform for new opera which has supported new work by more than 50 composers since its first edition in 2011. Recent credits as producer include 12:42, a documentary film exploring creative processes, isolation and digital connections (in partnership with the National Opera Studio) and Opera-tic – a digital opera in 15 scenes co-created by composer Michael Betteridge and a group of adults with Tourette Syndrome, with film by Alisdair Kitchen, produced by Second Movement and Tourettes Action, shortlisted for the 2023 Royal Philharmonic Society Impact Award, supported by OUP Music in its centenary year. In 2023/24 she is executive producer for the Aphasia New Music Group, a multi month music making programme for adults with Aphasia and their loved ones, in partnership with Oedipa and in collaboration with the UCL Communications Clinic. She studied English at Cambridge and Russian and East European Literature and Culture at UCL- SSEES. From 2015-2021 she was a board member of the Opera and Music Theatre Forum. From 2021-2023 Abigail was Chair of the Board of Trustees of OperaUpClose.
CLAIRE SHOVELTON Creative Producer
Claire is a producer with over 35 years professional experience in theatre, opera, dance and classical music including the Barbican, the Young Vic, Riverside Studios, operafactory, Sadlers Wells, Early Opera Company and the commercial West End. With a focus on new work she produces the award-winning ensemble CHROMA and collaborates regularly with the Royal Ballet and Opera, Britten Pears Arts and Tête à Tête: the opera festival.
Claire also has a focus on inclusion and wellbeing, with roles including Creative Producer for BEAM and Quiet Songs, both addressing access provision, equity and collaborative processes in live performance practice, and Rough for Opera, the series from Second Movement developing opera practitioners and new opera. Consultancy work includes Citizens of the World – a choir for refugees and their allies, and disabled-led theatre company Graeae. She serves as chair for Filament Theatre.
RICHARD BAKER music mentor
Composer, conductor, teacher and mentor, Richard Baker studied composition in the Netherlands with Louis Andriessen and in London with John Woolrich, after which the position of New Music Fellow at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (2001–3) inaugurated a strand of work as a concert curator and programme adviser which continues to this day. He has been a Professor of Composition at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama since 2004.
His compositional output embraces songs and song cycles, several short choral pieces, instrumental solos and chamber music as well as works for larger ensemble. Key works include the basset clarinet concerto Learning to Fly (1999); Gaming (2010), a trio for cello, marimba and piano; Kerdantata (2015) for piano trio, for the Fidelio Trio; and several works for Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, with whom he has also worked often as a conductor. The Tyranny of Fun (2012), the second of those BCMG commissions, won Baker a nomination in the 2014 Royal Philharmonic Society Awards.
Baker’s first piece for full orchestra, The Price of Curiosity (2019), commissioned by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, is the first in an ongoing series of works which juxtapose instrumental ‘transcriptions’ of human speech against transcriptions of musical material that is in some way related to it; these also include Motet II(2020) and Motet IV (Accidental Activists) (2023), composed respectively for the Marseille-based Ensemble Télémaque and the Welsh new-music ensemble UPROAR.
All of the above strands of compositional activity are represented on Baker’s NMC portrait disc released in March 2024, which brings together eight works for various forces dating from 1994 to 2020.
As a conductor, Baker has formed strong relationships with the London Sinfonietta, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and Crash Ensemble, among others. As a regular collaborator for the BBC’s Total Immersion days he has directed portrait concerts of Stockhausen, George Crumb, James MacMillan, Jonathan Harvey, Oliver Knussen and Julian Anderson. He is particularly acclaimed as a conductor of contemporary opera, having premiered or revived key works by Gerald Barry, Peter Maxwell Davies, Guto Puw and Philip Venables. He has also worked with many outstanding composers of his own generation including Joanna Bailie, Richard Causton, Tansy Davies, Michael Zev Gordon, Morgan Hayes, Rebecca Saunders, Johannes Maria Staud and Ian Vine.
FINN BEAMES text mentor
Finn Beames is a writer, composer and director. His current projects include new musical Heavenly Bodies, commissioned by Audrey Productions and supported by Bristol Old Vic. Set in the Cotswolds, it fuses pole dancing with spiritual music, and is inspired by the true story of a failing chapel which played host to a pole dancer and a growing class of students.
Finn is a founder and leader of the Aphasia New Music Group, a co-creative music project delivered with UCL’s Communication Clinic. The ANMG supports adults with aphasia to develop a new music practice, and has mounted two London performances and a national tour to date.
In 2015 Finn won the Genesis Future Directors Award at the Young Vic, and directed Man: 3 Plays by Tennessee Williams. Following this he took up the Lina Bo Bardi Fellowship for research into theatre and social housing in the UK and Brazil, appointed by the British Council, Sesc São Paulo and Instituto Bardi. He has written and directed for Britten-Pears Arts, Helsinki Festival, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, London Sinfonietta, The Yard, Camden People’s Theatre and Strike A Light.
After a period of adjustment to living with chronic health conditions, he is glad to be making work again under the banner of Finn Beames & Company.
SECOND MOVEMENT
Second Movement is an opera company which supports new opera and people making opera for the first time. A current focus of its work is to support disabled and neurodivergent opera makers through Rough for Opera, its long running platform for new opera and work in progress.
Since 2011 Rough for Opera has platformed new work by more than 50 composers and new music ensembles including Bastard Assignments, Alex Ho and Julia Cheng, Alex Mills, Hermes Experiment, Kate Whitley, Michael Betteridge and Benjamin Tassie. It returned in May 2023 with relaxed performances at the Lilian Baylis Studio, Sadler’s Wells. Rough for Opera #18 – Relaxed featured three new works from Annie Lee, Calla Esperanza and Hannah Calascione, and Ella Jarman-Pinto and Jennifer Farmer. Rough for Opera #19 – TEXT is at Chelsea Theatre in September this year, with new work from librettists Simone Ibbett-Brown, Jen McGregor with composer Sarah Ann Marze and Chris Harris with composer Sarah Lianne Lewis.
Your Story, Your Voice, Your Stage is Second Movement’s programme to deliver opera and music making projects in the community, in collaboration with partners from the health sector. The Aphasia New Music Group is an ongoing co-creative music making project with adults with aphasia and their loved ones, in partnership with Oedipa and in collaboration with the UCL Communications Clinic. Music created through the project was performed in June 2023 and in April 2024. Your Story, Your Voice, Your Stage was launched at Rough for Opera #17 in 2019 which featured scenes from Oedipa’s Speak Red, an opera co-created by adults with aphasia. 2021 saw the online premiere of Opera-tic, an opera on film co-created by a group of adults with Tourette Syndrome, composer Michael Betteridge and filmmaker Alisdair Kitchen and produced in partnership with Tourettes Action. Opera-tic was shortlisted for the 2023 Royal Philharmonic Society Impact Award, supported by OUP Music in its centenary year.
In 2020 Second Movement collaborated with the National Opera Studio on 12:42, a documentary film exploring creative processes, isolation and digital connections. Featured composers included Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Emma-Ruth Richards and Gavin Higgins. In 2018 it was co-producer for 12:40 – Twelve Arias for Twelve Young Artists for the National Opera Studio’s 40th birthday,with arias by Philip Venables, Hannah Kendall, Samantha Fernando and Na’ama. Performances of the arias took place at Hoxton Hall in June 2018.
Previous production highlights include the UK premiere of Martinů’s The Knife’s Tears (2007, revived 2010 Brno and Prague,) “stunning” The Independent on Sunday, the first UK staged production of Shostakovich’s Rothschild’s Violin by Fleischmann, completed by Shostakovich, Fade by young US composer Stefan Weisman (2008, Second Movement commission) and The Medium by Menotti (2006, revived Northern Ireland 2011) “excellent” The Spectator. In 2012 Second Movement commissioned and produced Zátopek! by Emily Howard (music) and Selma Dimitrijevic (libretto) as part of the PRS for Music Foundation’s New Music 20×12 for the Cultural Olympiad, with support from Jerwood Charitable Foundation. Performed in Liverpool and London’s Southbank in partnership with Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Zátopek! was broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s Hear and Now and is available on NMC Recordings. “a tremendous opera” The Review Show, BBC2, 4* The Guardian.
Second Movement was founded in 2004 by director Oliver Mears, conductor Nicholas Chalmers and producer Abigail Toland.
rough for opera 