The 2026–27 Season

This season Rose City Renaissance Singers embark on two new Renaissance Evensongs at the Parish of St. Mark, a Valentine's evening of French chansons over wine, and a spring tour of Italian and English madrigals. Alongside the concerts run six afternoon workshops, open to singers and instrumentalists of all skill levels — from the cusp between medieval and Renaissance to the English madrigal, by way of Iberia, courtly love song, the verse anthem, and Tudor England in 1527.

Paul Klee, Fugue in Red

Paul Klee, Fugue in Red, 1921

Renaissance Evensong

A New Series at St. Mark

The Parish of St. Mark, 1025 NW 21st, Portland

Rose City Renaissance curates the new Renaissance Evensong Series at the beautiful Parish of St. Mark. Held near twilight and combining the ancient monastic hours of vespers and compline, Evensong is meant to convey a contemplative and peaceful meditation at the end of the day. The series unfolds across the year in the hands of several of Portland's early music ensembles, with RCRS singing two of the four.

Evensong I — Sunday, September 20, 2026 · 6:00pm

Thomas Tallis: the sober and grand sound of the Short Dorian Service, and the O sacrum convivium of 1575.

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Free to attend. Registration helps us plan seating and keeps you posted on the series.

Evensong II — Sunday, November 15, 2026 · 6:00pm

Robert Parsons, whose Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis is a soaring tour de force for a relatively small number of singers.

Register Here

Free to attend. Registration helps us plan seating and keeps you posted on the series.

Félix Vallotton, Five O'Clock

Félix Vallotton, Five O'Clock (Cinq heures), from Intimités, 1898

Chanson d'Amour

A Valentine's Pre-Dinner Show

The Art of Courtly Love

Sunday, February 14, 2027 · 5 pm · Tickets: $75

Ora et Labora Wine Shop, 3928 N Williams Ave, Portland

Join us for our first ever collaboration with the wonderful wine shop (and appropriately named) Ora et Labora on Williams in North Portland. In an attempt to break out of the box that most performed polyphony finds itself in, we will be serving small plates and French wine paired with some of the most wildly beautiful secular works of the era including: Josquin's Mille Regretz, Cornysh's Ah, Robin and the deeply moving and hypnotic motet of Nicolas Gombert — Je Prens Congie. In contrast we will also perform works expressing the lighter side of love such as Il est Bel et Bon by Passereau, Bonjour Mon Cœur by the master Orlando de Lassus and a few more. Come by and fall in love with the music, the wine … or us.

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Egon Schiele, Stylized Flowers before a Decorative Background

Egon Schiele, Stylized Flowers before a Decorative Background, 1908

Amaryllis

Monteverdi, Marenzio, de Rore, Wilbye, Gibbons

The Madrigal from Italy to England

Friday, May 7, 2027 · 7:00pm · Tickets: $35.00

The Lantern PDX, 2828 SE Stephens Street, Portland
Saturday, May 8 — East County Library, Gresham
Sunday, May 9 — Tualatin Public Library

For our spring concert we will be embarking on an exploration of the madrigal — the Italian origins through to the second wave in England. Join us at a very special location in southeast Portland: The Lantern. This gorgeous mid-century church has been recently reworked as a community grief center, and we are honored and delighted to be the first early music ensemble to ever perform here. Come experience the hauntingly beautiful works of Cipriano de Rore — O Sonno and Mia Benigna Fortuna — as well as madrigals by Marenzio, Cruda Amarilli by Monteverdi, and works by Arcadelt, Wilbye and Gibbons. Only Portland could hold an event this classy in a space this beautiful … come and close your eyes and experience what this music can evoke.

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2026–27 Workshops

Open to singers and instrumentalists (A=440) of all skill levels — fun and informal, with time built in to talk about the music, and without the pressure of a performance.

Detail of an angel from the Wilton Diptych

On the Cusp Between Medieval and Renaissance

with Eric Mentzel, University of Oregon

Sunday, October 18, 2026

Was the Renaissance really a clean break from the medieval world? Eric Mentzel makes a case for continuity over rupture through the music of Dufay, Dunstable, and Power — composers whose work sits right at that fault line.

El Transparente, Toledo Cathedral

Music of the Iberian Peninsula

with the Portland Recorder Society

Sunday, November 29, 2026

Some of the era's most searching and dramatic music was written in Spain and Portugal — Morales, Guerrero, and Victoria, with a sound marked by intense chromaticism, dramatic word-painting, and an almost mystical devotional fervor.

Amour kissing the Lover, Roman de la Rose

The Art of Courtly Love

From Pop to Art: Courtly Love Song

Sunday, January 31, 2027

Love songs were simply the pop music of the court — until French and English composers dressed them in the full apparatus of learned polyphony. A repertoire that lets us watch, almost in real time, popular music becoming art music.

Orlando Gibbons: The Verse Anthem

with Cascadia Viols

Saturday, February 27, 2027

Full choral sections alternate with solo voice accompanied by a consort of viols — a texture somewhere between sacred polyphony and chamber music, intimate and expressive.

The Ordinary and the Sublime

English Sacred Music in 1527 · with Dr. Kerry McCarthy

Sunday, March 14, 2027

The time machine goes 500 years back, to March 1527, for an afternoon with a group of Tudor musicians — ending with John Browne's monumental Stabat Mater, sung and played by candlelight.

The Month of Maying

English Madrigals

Saturday, May 1, 2027

By the 1580s English composers had made the madrigal entirely their own — a lighter, more pastoral charm, full of shepherds, nymphs, and the fa-la-las that became the genre's unmistakable signature.

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