The Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra’s 2022-23 season will begin on October 8 with the world premiere of Drew Hemenger’s climate-change-themed Ozymandias: To Sell a Planet, featuring the Boulder Philharmonic Chorus and tenor Matthew Plenk. The work incorporates U.N. climate reports, Native American texts, and speeches by climate activist Greta Thunberg, as well as Shelley’s poem of the same name. Music Director Michael Butterman will conduct the program, which also will feature Michael Abels’s Global Warming, the Overture to Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Trauermusik from Wagner’s Götterdämmerung, and Strauss’s Don Juan. Also planned during the season: a new work by Boulder native Leigha Amick, and composer/double-bassist Xavier Foley performing Bottesini’s Gran Duo Concertante with violinist Eunice Kim, and his own composition For Justice and Peace, written to mark the 400th anniversary of the arrival of slave ships in Jamestown. Concertmaster Charles Wetherbee will serve as soloist in Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5, and the orchestra will perform Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7, Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, and Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8. The Boulder Phil Percussion Ensemble will perform at the Boulder Bandshell in late August; and the orchestra will perform with the band DevotchKa.
