WELCOME TO Season 18: SHIFT
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | August 11, 2026
WELCOME TO SHIFT: Resonance Ensemble’s 18th season invites audiences to listen. Differently.
PORTLAND, OR—What happens when we change the way we listen? Resonance Ensemble, a Portland-based professional vocal ensemble known for powerful performances that spark meaningful social change through commissioning, collaborating, and connecting, announces its 18th season, SHIFT.
Centered on music that urges us to shift our perspective and turn our attention, SHIFT invites audiences to listen more deeply—to one another, to the natural world, to histories that resist a single telling, and to the land beneath our feet. Across four distinctive programs, Resonance explores stories shaped by power and the lived realities of people, animals, and entire ecosystems, from joyful artistic risk-taking to the language of the natural world, from stories that challenge what we thought we knew to questions of belonging and place. Each concert offers an opportunity to listen with fresh ears.
“SHIFT invites us to be curious and to question what we think we know,” said Katherine FitzGibbon, Artistic Director of Resonance Ensemble. “We hope audiences leave each concert thinking more deeply about the stories they’ve heard, the layers and perspectives within them, and their own place in the larger story.”
Other highlights of the season include:
World premieres and new commissions by Judy A. Rose, Giancarlo Castro D’Addona, including collaborations with Portland artists and poets
A season-opening Brunch & Bad Choices fundraiser hosted by Portland icon Poison Waters, featuring live music and a hosted bar
More than 100 singers and a full orchestra joining Resonance for Gabriela Lena Frank’s Conquest Requiem
Guest artists and creative collaborators from across Portland and beyond, bringing together composers, poets, storytellers, musicians, and visual artists
Community partnerships with organizations including Bird Alliance of Oregon and Portland Public Schools
For details about each concert, please see below. Season subscriptions are now available. Tickets to individual concerts will go on sale to the public on September 81, 2026. To order, go here.
Welcome to SHIFT.
Your host, Poison Waters! Photo Credit: Carlos Silvas
BRUNCH & BAD CHOICES*
Sat. Sept. 26 | 11:00 | Alberta Rose Theatre
Doors open at 10:00 a.m. for brunch and mingling.
We throw the rulebook out the window.
Resonance Ensemble kicks things off with Brunch & Bad Choices, a raucous, one-of-a-kind fundraiser inspired by the popular Miscast format—and it is exactly what it sounds like.
Resonance singers will take on songs you would never expect to hear them sing, with unexpected pairings, joyful risk-taking, and plenty of shenanigans along the way. Hosted by Portland drag icon and longtime entertainer Poison Waters, the morning is part brunch, part celebration and entirely unlike anything you’ve ever witnessed at a Resonance concert.
Guests will enjoy a late-morning celebration with brunchy nibbles, bubbles, coffee, and a hosted bar, along with live performances from Resonance artists taking on songs and styles far outside their usual repertoire. Expect surprising musical choices, bold performances, and plenty of artistic risk-taking as singers step into music that is playful, outrageous, and entirely their own.
Pajamas encouraged. Decorum negotiable.
*HERE’S ONE VERY GOOD REASON TO SUBSCRIBE: Brunch & Bad Choices is included with every Season 18 subscription package. That means brunch, bubbles, a hosted bar (FREE BOOZE!) at no extra cost, Poison Waters, and a whole lot of shenanigans—all included as part of your full-season package. Single tickets go on sale September 1, 2026, but subscribers get the best value + the whole season. Note: Thise is all-ages, with alcohol available to guests 21+ with valid ID.
FOR THE BIRDS
Sun. Jan. 31 | 3:00 p.m. | Agnes Flanagan Chapel
Wildlife photography by Ethan Allred, featured in For the Birds, 2027. Courtesy of the artist.
We listen beyond ourselves.
In partnership with Bird Alliance of Oregon, For the Birds invites audiences to reconsider music—and our relationship with the natural world.
Featuring Resonance’s 2026–27 commissioning composer Judy A. Rose, photography by naturalist Ethan Allred, and Edie Hill’s poignant masterwork Spectral Spirits, a tribute to endangered and extinct birds, the program explores birdsong, migration, and the fragile interconnectedness between humans and the ecosystems we inhabit.
Works by Caroline Shaw and other composers further expand the conversation, asking us to listen not only to the music, but to the world beyond ourselves.
CONQUEST REQUIEM
March 13, 2027 | 7:30 p.m. | The Reser Center for the Arts
March 14, 2027 | 3:00 p.m. | Benson High School Auditorium
La Malinche, 1940. (detail) ©The Alfredo Ramos Martínez Research Project
We explore histories that can’t be reduced to a single story.
Joined by Orchestra Nova Northwest, Choral Arts Ensemble of Portland, and guest soloists, Resonance performs Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Gabriela Lena Frank’s Conquest Requiem, a sweeping work that invites us to reconsider the stories we think we know.
Through the figure of Malinche—an Indigenous interpreter whose role in the Spanish conquest of Mexico has been understood in profoundly different ways—the work explores power, survival, and the complexity of historical memory. No single perspective can tell the whole story.
The concert also features the world premiere of a new work for orchestra and choir by Portland-based Venezuelan composer Giancarlo Castro D’Addona, honoring the life and work of Del Greenfield, a peace activist whose lifelong commitment to peace and justice left a lasting legacy in Portland and around the world.
ON THIS LAND
June 27, 2027 | 3:00 p.m. | Agnes Flanagan Chapel
Composer Kenji Bunch at the premiere of
On This Land, 2025. Photo Credit: R. Hadiashar
We ask: whose land is it?
Resonance is joined by Fear No Music and Las Matices Latin Ensemble for a powerful exploration of land, belonging, and memory.
Kenji Bunch’s On This Land, commissioned by Resonance with text by Chisao Hata, reflects on Japanese American incarceration in the Pacific Northwest. Alongside Shruthi Rajasekar’s Whose Names Are Unknown and Freddy Vilches’s Abya Yala, a multilingual suite created with Indigenous poets from across the Americas, these works reveal the many ways history and place are connected.
Together, the program insists that we listen differently to the places some of us call home—and to the stories embedded in the land beneath our feet.
With SHIFT, Resonance continues to explore what makes a musical experience meaningful both on and off the stage. Across the season, the ensemble creates opportunities for Portland audiences to engage more deeply with the ideas and communities at the heart of the music.
Season 18 invites Portland audiences to listen differently—to music, to one another, and to the world around us.
Welcome to SHIFT.
Season subscriptions are on sale now at resonancechoral.org. Single tickets go on sale September 1, 2026.
Design elements throughout our season campaign feature photography by Joe Cantrell, an ongoing artistic collaborator with Resonance Ensemble. Used with permission. Thank you, Joe!
Note to Journalists: Katherine FitzGibbon, Shohei Kobayashi, and featured artists are available for print, online, and broadcast interviews. For more information about Resonance Ensemble’s 18th season or to schedule an interview, please contact David Krueger at david@resonancechoral.org or 971-212-8034.