2024-25 Season at a Glance

Kahane Conducts Grieg & Sibelius

Saturday, September 21, 2024 at 7:30PM

FirstOntario Centre (1 Summers Lane)

Join us as the HPO opens a new season in grand style, celebrating 140 years in the city! JUNO Award-winner Philip Chiu will sweep you up in the thunderous passion of Grieg’s Piano Concerto. Music Director, James Kahane then leads the orchestra in this season’s HPO “Musicians’ Choice”: Sibelius’ Second Symphony, a musical embodiment of hope and the resilience of the human spirit. Plus, a fresh commission by HPO Composer-in-Residence Abigail Richardson-Schulte!

Music of the Movies: Tribute to John Williams

Saturday, October 19, 2024 at 7:30PM

FirstOntario Centre (1 Summers Lane)

Get ready for a close encounter with film music’s most widely honoured living composer, John Williams! Experience the lush symphonic style of his critically acclaimed movie scores as performed by your HPO, including beloved selections from E.T., Jaws, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, and Jurrasic Park, as well as the iconic themes and music from the Star Wars space opera epic.

Feher Conducts Brahms

Saturday, November 9, 2024 at 7:30PM

FirstOntario Centre (1 Summers Lane)

Join the HPO and conductor Andrei Feher with Métis mezzo-soprano Rebecca Cuddy as they plumb the emotional depths of Rachmaninoff’s “song without words”, and Ian Cusson’s moving song cycle setting texts by U.S. Poet Laureate and Muscogee Nation member Joy Harjo— an empowering exploration of love, relationships, and woman-ness. Then, revel in the warmth of Brahms’ sunny Second Symphony— a balm for the soul.

Home for the Holidays

Saturday, December 14, 2024 at 7:30PM

FirstOntario Centre (1 Summers Lane)

Get into the holiday spirit with this joyful and heartwarming concert featuring the Hamilton Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, now celebrating 60 years young! The Hamilton Children’s Choir will lend their beautiful voices— as will you!— to a curated playlist of beloved Christmas carols and contemporary festive favourites led by dynamic conductor Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser. It’s a Hamilton holiday tradition!

Beethoven’s Seventh

Saturday, January 18, 2025 at 3:00PM (MATINEE)

FirstOntario Centre (1 Summers Lane)

Rev up your new year with this HPO concert of brilliant orchestral works! James Sommerville is your guide on a vibrant journey from Pierre Mercure’s colourful symphonic fantasy, through Alice Ho’s animated tone poem that evokes the dazzling rebirth of a mythological bird, to Beethoven’s exhilarating Seventh Symphony. Sommerville also takes the spotlight as soloist in Mozart’s exuberant Third Horn Concerto.

HPO Performs the Music of James Bond

Saturday, February 8, 2025 at 7:30PM

FirstOntario Centre (1 Summers Lane)

Nobody does it better than James Bond. Hamilton-native Darcy Hepner takes you on a thrilling adventure for your ears only through the iconic music of James Bond films. Hamiltonian vocal stars bring the swagger and the romance of such Bond theme songs as License to Kill, Goldfinger and Skyfall.

Pictures at an Exhibition

Saturday, March 22, 2025 at 7:30PM

FirstOntario Centre (1 Summers Lane)

Immerse yourself in the sounds of your HPO performing vivid masterpieces of orchestral colour. Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite enchants with charming fairy-tale pieces evoked through radiant orchestration, which the composer also applies to Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition— a musical gallery tour of paintings that is a splendid showcase for the Orchestra’s musicians. At the heart of the concert, Jane Coop takes on Ravel’s virtuosic Piano Concerto in G Major.

Nosky Performs Handel, Haydn & Bach

Saturday, April 12, 2025 at 7:30PM

FirstOntario Centre (1 Summers Lane)

Enjoy the scintillating textures and diverse instrumental sounds of three lively concertos by Handel and J.S. Bach, featuring notable Canadian violinist and early music specialist Aisslinn Nosky with musicians of the HPO. She also leads the Orchestra in Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 94— aptly nicknamed for its many musical twists and turns, it’s as much a sensation today as when the HPO first performed the piece in 1884!

James Ehnes Plays Tchaikovsky

Saturday, May 3, 2025 at 7:30PM

FirstOntario Centre (1 Summers Lane)

Don’t miss the HPO’s rousing season closer! Hear the consummate artistry of eminent Canadian violinist James Ehnes in Tchaikovsky’s rhapsodic Violin Concerto. Then, experience the expansive sonic dramas of Mahler’s First Symphony, as the HPO takes you from a depiction of nature’s awakening in spring, through rustic dances and animals’ ironic funeral procession for a hunter, to a final confrontation with “all the world’s sorrow” that ends in blazing glory.