Orchestra for the Earth - Outrage + Optimism

Orchestra for the Earth play the Sohmen Concert Hall at the Schwarzman Centre on Thursday 22 April, with a conversation and music running for two hours from 19:00. It's timed for Earth Day, and the whole evening is built around the climate crisis.

The conversation is led by Christiana Figueres, former UN climate chief and co-host of the Outrage + Optimism podcast, who'll be in discussion with conductor John Warner. They'll be talking through the roles of outrage and optimism when it comes to the climate crisis, and the part music can play in connecting us with the natural world. The music comes from Orchestra for the Earth, and the night culminates in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

The evening is part of the Schwarzman Centre's Planetary Health season, which runs from April to June 2027. The season brings together artists, researchers and communities to look at the relationship between the health of people, societies and the natural world through film, classical music inspired by nature, immersive experiences and new theatre, alongside perspectives from historians, futurists, philosophers, linguists, biologists, geographers and translators. The Centre itself opened in 2026 and houses seven of Oxford University's humanities faculties, the Bodleian Humanities Library and state-of-the-art performance, screening and exhibition spaces. The Sohmen Concert Hall is one of those performance spaces, and it's where this particular night sits within the wider season.